Puns Lost, Puns Regain’d: The pun in Paradise
Lost and Paradise Regain’d.
Good afternoon, today I want to take a short stroll through my thesis. The ideas
presented here form the core of my thesis after three years of musing, ruminating, and
gesticulating at books with my pipe. I have been examining uses of the pun in
canonical literature from Shakespeare to Pope.
Renaissance writers were not shy of a pun or two. However, using the term ‘pun’ to
refer to what they were doing is anachronistic. The meaning of the word ‘pun’ that
we are familiar with was first used by Dryden in 1662. What we term an act of
punning would, in actual fact, be one of five rhetorical techniques that all writers of
this period would have been familiar with due to the humanist educators of the time
deciding that the classical art of rhetoric was a vital part of education along with
grammar, Latin, and the cane. The five techniques are Paranomasia, Antanaclasis,
Asteismus, Syllepsis, and Polyptoton. Paranomasia, simply put, is a homophonic pun.
Syllepsis is a homonymic pun. Asteismus requires two speakers and the second
speaker to misinterpret one of the first speakers words. Hamlet uses this technique to
convince people that he is a pinch of tobacco short of a full pipe. Polyptoton I wish to
discuss in some depth later on. Antanclasis is where one word is used two or more
times in relatively close succession and where the meaning of the word shifts with
each use. Here, for example, is perhaps the most extreme case of antanaclasis that I
know of.
135
Who ever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will,
And Will too boote, and Will in over-plus,
More then enough am I that vexe thee still,
To thy sweet will making addition thus.
Wilt thou whose will is large and spatious,
Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine,
Shall will in others seeme right gracious,
And in my will no faire acceptance shine:
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The sea all water, yet receives raine still,
And in aboundance addeth to his store,
So thou being rich in Will adde to thy Will,
One will of mine to make thy large Will more.
Let no unkinde, no faire beseechers kill,
Thinke all but one, and me in that one Will.
Joel Fineman noted that for some people, this sonnet shows Shakespeare at his worst
and went on to argue that by repeating his name in this sonnet Shakespeare disrupts
the unity of an ‘I’ voice by explicitly demonstrating the distance between the ideal
representation of subjectivity, the ‘I’ of the poet and the ‘you’ that is the ideal
representation of the object, the Dark Lady , and the inability of ‘Will’ to fully express
the being that is ‘William Shakespeare,’ the Dark Lady’s desire and a number of other
signifieds inbetween. By indulging in an extreme case of antanaclasis, thirteen
repetitions of the word ‘will’ – fourteen if you include ‘wilt’, Shakespeare tests the
limits of the word ‘will’ to signify meaning. When reading the poem, the word ‘will’
becomes stripped of meaning by the excessive use, so many meanings are used that
the word becomes overburdened we begin to simply hear it as a sound and fury
signifying nothing. Will, will, will, will, will, will, will, will. The final line
exemplifies all the tensions of the poem. The poet expresses a desire for the Dark
Lady to unify everything into one ‘will’ that is constructed of all the other wills
including the poet. His desire for her desire to be ‘one’ – to have a stable identity is
destroyed by the inability of the word ‘will’ to refer to any one, single, meaning
anymore. Exemplified here is the logic of the pun driving the logic of the poem.
The poets and critics of the eighteenth century were well aware of this problem
inherent in language. Several times people called for language to be cleaned up and
become more mathmatical in nature, most famously, perhaps, by Sprat in his History
of the Royal Society who piped up with a call for a “mathematical plainness” in
language. As we are all well aware, theory and practice rarely meet. However, the
puns of Pope differ dramatically from those of Shakespeare. Here is one of Pope’s
most famous puns:
Where Bentley late tempestuous wont to sport
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In troubled waters, but now sleeps in Port.
-
The Dunciad IV.201-202.
This syllepsis is clean, comprehendable, and easily contains its two meanings without
ever being in any danger of the ‘non-meaning’ that threaten’s Shakespeare’s ‘Will.’
The closest Pope ever comes to the potential confusion that punning always flirts with
is in The Rape of the Lock:
Where wigs with wigs, with sword-knots sword-knots strive,
Beaux banish beaux, and coaches coaches drive.
The Rape of the Lock I.101-2.
The OED defines ‘sword-knot’ as: a ribbon or tassel tied to the hilt of a sword. The
repetition of ‘sword-knots’ here could be read as not being a pun at all, that people are
competing simply through extravagant ornamentation but it also summons up a
wonderful image of a knot of swords in actual combat. This comes about through
antanaclasis as the repetition of the word forces your ear to hear it again, giving you
mind second go at defining the word – opening it up. The play is limited though and
it is carefully controlled by Pope. The effect is happening not just with sword-knot
sword knot but also wigs with wigs, beaux banish beaux and coaches coaches drive.
The overall effect is of a calculated semantic confusion to mimic the confusion of
wigs, sword-knots, beauxs and coaches. By not giving us time to dwell overly long
on one particular repeated word, Pope refuses to follow the logic of the pun to its
conclusion as Shakespeare did in Sonnet 135.
These examples go some way towards demonstrating the difference in use of pun
techniques between the eighteenth century and the Renaissance. What happened to
cause such a change in use? The short answer is that along with all the political,
theological and economic changes between the two periods, in poetical terms, Milton
happened.
[“But what have been thy answers, what but dark
Ambiguous and with double sense deluding,”
(Milton – Paradise Regain’d I.434-5.)
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‘One word with two meanings is the traitor’s shield and shaft: and a slit tongue be his
blazon!’ – Caucasian Proverb.
(Coleridge – ‘Alice Du Clos or The Forked Tongue: A Ballad.’)]
However, let me now attempt a longer answer. The common view of critics, as
expressed by Christ in Paradise Regain’d, is that ambiguity is a hallmark of the
Satanic style. Shoaf, in Milton, Poet of Duality defines ambiguity as “duplicity, the
vice of language, two intentions contend for the same semantic space, decietful and
designing, choice and liberty revoked.” It was Walter Landor who made the famous
claim that the fallen angels fell because they punned. The most infamous example of
punning in Paradise Lost occurs during the War in Heaven in book 6.
Vanguard, to Right and Left the Front unfould;
That all may see who hate us, how we seek
Peace and composure, and with open brest
Stand readie to receive them, if they like
Our overture, and turn not back perverse;
But that I doubt, however witness Heav’n,
Heav’n witness thou anon, while we discharge
Freely our part; yee who appointed stand
Do as you have in charge, and briefly touch
What we propound, and loud that all may hear.
So scoffing in Ambiguous words,
(Raphael relating Satan’s speech – Paradise Lost VI.558-568.)
Bentley, when not sleeping in port, found time to comment on this section: “These
passages, of Satan and Belial’s insulting and jesting Mockery, have been often
censur’d; especially be an ingenious Gentleman, who had a settled Aversion to all
Puns, as they are called; which niceness, if carried to Extremity, will deprciate half of
the Good Sayings of the old Greek and Latin Wits. I’ll not engage in the Opinions of
either Side. But, for my Author’s Vindication, I’ll observe, that he copied from his
great Predecessor Homer; who makes Patroclus, after he had slain Cebriones,
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Hector’s Charioteer, to take the like jocose insulting Humor.” Bentley here telling
Addison to stick that in his pipe and smoke it.
Neil Forsyth in The Satanic Epic argued that “what makes these puns so tiresome is
the schoolboy knowingness that one hears in the speaking voice, one imagines the
other devils tittering as the clever Satan delivers his taunting double-entendres.” And
this section ably demonstrates Robert Entzminger’s claim that “demonic puns are
intended both to mock and to decieve, and Satan’s rhetoric is adopted for its
calculated effect on his hearers.”
The word that Forsyth claims is most played upon throughout the Paradise Lost is
‘dis-’. We find a ‘dis-’ word in the first line of the epic – “disobedience” and we find
it here in the extract from Satan. Like Shakespeare, Milton was a great inventor of
words. Being his longest sustained work, Paradise Lost is where most of Milton’s
inventing went on and Milton’s favoured form of invention, as has been noted by
scholars, was to attach a negative prefix to a word that until then had not borne a
negative prefix.
Forsyth claims that “‘de-’ or ‘dis-’ are the results of the Fall, and that the range of
these prefixes define Paradise Lost’s Satanic movement from unity to separation and
discord. ‘Discharge’ as used by Satan here, I think, proves Forsyth’s point.
Discharge, as we know, is a word used to describe firing a firearm and here is applied
to the firing of Satan’s recent invention, cannons. However, it also means and here I
quote the OED: “4. a. The act of freeing from obligation, liability, or restraint; release,
exoneration, exemption.” Think of a soldier being honourably discharged. While
they “discharge / freely our part” they are engaging in an act that they believe will
free them of obligation to God, release them from what they perceive as enslavement
to God and Christ. Dis was Virgil’s name for the King of the Underworld and in
Paradise Lost milton uses this to give ‘dis-’ the prefix the added echo of death. So we
also get the ironic ‘death’ joined with ‘charge’ which in its earliest meaning meant
‘ material load, that which can be borne, taken or received.’ Quite literally the Devils
who think that they are freeing themselves by shooting canons are in actual fact
burdoning themselves with death. That burdon they will share with us after Adam
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and Eve’s fall but for the fallen angels it is a burdon that offers no salvation or escape
– they fall and death is created but death teases them with an oblivion which they can
never experience. Being a pun loving public, we should not fail to hear the “death
load” in discharge applying in a rather grisly, though ultimately ironic, manner to the
cannon balls themselves – a load of death for we mortals and not really too much
trouble if you are an immortal angel.
In Paradise Lost, Milton baroquely, and negatively, connects punning with Satan.
However, in speeches by God and Christ, in the style of books 11 and 12 of Paradise
Lost, Milton displays a new poetic, a poetic that is further exemplified and explored in
Paradise Regain’d and after that Samson Agonistes; anticipating the Eighteenth
Century poetic further down the pipeline.
It is important to note that while punning has been connected to Satan and satanic
rhetoric, puns still exist in this alternative poetic but they are not highlighted as they
are with Satan. For example:
But God who oft descends to visit men
Unseen, and through thir habitations walks
To mark thir doings, them beholding soon,
Comes down to see thir Citie, ere the Tower
Obstruct Heav’n Towrs, and in derision sets
Upon thir Tongues a various Spirit to rase
Quite out thir Native Language, and instead
To sow a jangling noise of words unknown:
Forthwith a hideous gabble rises loud
Among the Builders; each to other calls
Not understood, till hoarse, and all in rage,
As mockt they storm; great laughter was in Heav’n
And looking down, to see the hubbub strange
And hear the din; thus was the building left
Ridiculous, and the work Confusion nam’d.
(Michael – Paradise Lost XII.48-62)
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This extract, from book 12 of Paradise Lost demonstrates how different this poetic is
from the Satanic poetic that has dominated so much of Paradise Lost. What is
noticable here is what is deliberately absent. This section is about the Tower of Babel
and the Milton who wrote the Eve / evil pun, the Milton who wrote the tempted /
attempt pun, the Milton who wrote the sin / sign pun, the very same Milton will not
allow Michael to make a Tower of Babel and babble pun. The OED claims that no
direct connexion of babble “with Babel can be traced; though association with that
may have affected the senses.” But incorrect etymologies never stopped Milton –
remember the raven / ravenous pun in Paradise Regain’d. At the conclusion, where
one expects the name “babel” we are given “confusion” instead. While I admit to a
predisposition towards granting the possibility of a pun I find here only the deliberate
absence of a pun. I am not arguing that this holds true for all of books eleven or
twelve, Paradise Regain’d and Samson Agonistes. What I am arguing is that in these
texts there is a deliberate effort to admit to polysemy and to control it – and as
evidenced in this passage, through absence if necessary. The poetic equivalent of
saying “no pun intended” whereby the pun is acknowledged and ignored, a
highlighted self-censorship.
It is polyptoton that becomes the central pun technique of Milton’s new poetic
because it is the favoured technique of Christ. Polyptoton, is where a word is repeated
but in a different case or inflection. As evidenced here, in book 3 of Paradise Lost
where we first meet Christ:
O Father, gracious was that word which clos’d
Thy sovran sentence, that Man should find grace;
For which both Heav’n and Earth shall high extoll
Thy praises, with th’innumerable sound
Of Hymns and sacred Songs, wherewith thy Throne
Encompass’d shall resound thee ever blest.
For should Man finally be lost, should Man
Thy creature late so lov’d, thy youngest Son
Fall circumvented thus by fraud, though joynd
With his own folly? that be from thee farr,
That farr be from thee, Father, who art Judg
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Of all things made, and judgest onely right.
Walter Nash asserts that polyptoton when “deliberate it is often a form of word-play.
Strictly speaking, this figure is proper to richly inflected languages with their variety
of word-endings denoting case, tense, mood and so on. The English examples might
be described as pseudopolyptoton.” What I would claim is that polyptoton is a
rhetorical technique that works in English but that it only carries the disruption of
being a pun in some instances. The changing of ‘gracious’ to ‘grace’ and ‘judge’ to
‘judgest’ do not stike me as being puns but are instances of polyptoton. ‘Sound’ to
‘resound’, is a pun and a polyptoton. What polyptoton allows the poet to do is to
utilize the polysemous potential of language by explicitly calling attention to the
changing of the word and meaning. Instead of making one word, or one sound, or the
repetition of one word carry multiple denotations, polyptoton allows multiple
meanings to build up through multiple words. It shows how language is linked, how
one sound is linked to another similar sound and how meanings are built up and
differentiated. It is at once a nod to the metamorphic nature of language and a
controlled use of that metamorphosis.
No more shalt thou by oracling abuse
The Gentiles; henceforth Oracles are ceast,
And thou no more with Pomp and Sacrifice
Shalt be enquir’d at Delphos or elsewhere,
At least in vain, for they shall find thee mute.
God hath now sent his living Oracle
Into the World, to teach his final will,
And sends his Spirit of Truth henceforth to dwell
In pious Hearts, an inward Oracle
To all truth requisite for men to know.
So spake our Saviour;
As Christ makes clear, in this speech, Satan is being quietened. No more shall Satan
provide oracles. I think that the way Christ really rams this point home to Satan is by
using the polyptoton. The ‘oracling; and ‘oracles’ of Satan are here reduced through
polyptoton to one oracle, Christ. There is a subtle shift in the antanaclasis at the end
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in the repetition of ‘oracle’. It moves from being Christ to Christ’s word that will
become the Bible in centuries to come. But, it is still the same Oracle because Christ
is the Word, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the
Word was God.’ as the Gospel of John reminds us. Christ shows the incorrect uses of
the word oracle and then he shows us the correct use of the word.
I believe that it is here, in Paradise Regain’d that Milton attempts to redeem language
through Christ and what we end up with is an Eighteenth Century poetics. We have
moved from a freer, Satanic, play to a more restrained, more focussed, Christ like play,
where the ideal is not necessarily for one word one meaning –that is a pipe dream, as
Milton knew and Paradise Lost is a testament to that. Much of the power and
sublimity of Paradise Lost comes from Milton’s struggle to represent God, Christ,
and Paradise through an imperfect, fallen, language. Milton, as I hope I have
demonstrated in some small way in this paper, attempted to compensate for the
Satanic elements in our fallen language through the use of polyptoton. For better or
for worse, the poets of the eighteenth century picked up on this poetic and produced,
in poetry that attempted to subdue the logic of the pun.
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