Although critics in general avoid discussing outright religion, it is hard not to see the controversy over Paradise Lost as religiously motivated. As Fowler points out, “it is hard to imagine any sense in which fighting against God is not a religious experience” (qtd. in Forsyth 85). Steadman admits that all the positive values associated with Milton’s Satan are morally neutral—they can be seen as good in other characters. Satan is evil compared to Prometheus because he is rebelling against God, rather than Zeus. But remove the associated moral biases, and the language they use is remarkably similar.
Prometheus Bound, Aeschylus
And dost thou think that I
In fear of these new gods will cower and quake?
Far, far am I from that. (41)
So let him hurl his sulphurous flames from heaven, With white-winged snow and subterranean thunder Make Chaos and confusion of the world!
Not thus will he constrain my tongue to tell
By whose hand he from tyranny shall fall. (43)
Richard DuRocher insists that Satan is “the hero of an epic tradition that the poem ultimately disavows,” and sees the poem as offering a kind of “heroic and at times perilous struggle between poetic fiction and Christian truth” (119, 218).
But as Werblowsky pointed out in response to C.S. Lewis in 1952, any reading where Satan is not the hero of Paradise Lost takes a deliberate and active process of obfuscation:
The Satanist reaction is the only possible one… any attempt at minimizing or denigrating the figure of Satan is bound to be a failure, notwitshanding all the subtle and clever arguments and clever dialectics employed to this end. This method and its failure are exhibited almost to perfection in Mr. C.S. Lewis’s, in many respects admirable, A Preface to Paradise Lost, and to a lesser degree in Professor Mulgrove’s article ‘Is the Devil an Ass.’ Satan has been made the object of all Mr. Lewis’ hair-splitting logic, persuasive charm and subtle irony, but unfortunately none of his poetic feeling and artistic receptivity, of which he has given so much proof on other occasions. Cleverness is a virtue of very doubtful value. Far from solving any real problems, whether in theology, philosophy, and art (including poetry), it more often tends to obscure truth, leading at its best to intellectual inauthenticity, at its worst to downright dishonesty. (5)
Likewise, many critics are exasperated by the complicated techniques necessary to reach Fishean reading of Paradise Lost.
In one of the least convincing parts of his remarkable book, Fish needs to argue against the obvious meaning of the word in order to undermine the advanced and sympathetic position that Milton seems to accord Satan. That is part of the Fish
spending several clearly argued pages showing why the words cannot mean what they purport to mean. (Forsyth 13)
R.V. Young writes, in Stanley Fish: The Critic as Sophist:
Because his general understanding of human nature and of the human condition is false, Fish fails in the specific task of a university scholar, which requires that learning be placed in the service of truth. And this, finally, is the critical issue in the contemporary university of which Stanley Fish is a typical representative: sophistry renders truth itself equivocal and deprives scholarly learning of its reason for being.
His brash disdain of principle and his embrace of sophistry reveal the hollowness hidden at the heart of the current academic enterprise. (244)
Terry Eagleton describes Fish’s “discreditable epistemology” as “sinister”. The
philosopher Martha Nussbaum calls Fish’s work “rhetorical manipulation” (220-229). David Hirsch sees Fish as left to “wander in his own Elysian fields, hopelessly alienated from art, from truth, and from humanity” (68).
John Rumrich, in Milton Unbound, challenged the Fish-informed consensus, on the grounds that its way of treating Milton’s readers as victims of a text full of satanic pitfalls is pedagogically disastrous. In Milton and Heresy, Rumrich and Stephen B. Dobranski write
It is distinctly paradoxical that John Milton – who opposed infant baptism, supported regicide, defended divorce and approved of polygamy - should be heard as a voice of orthodoxy. Yet modern scholarship has often understated or explained away his heretical opinions. (1)
Peter Herman in Destablizing Milton (2005) resists “the paradigm that has largely governed Milton studies until very recently,” (7); Robert M. Adams worried whether his own ideas could
have any authority “against the Christian humanist morality that has held the strong right-center position in Miltonic criticism for so long” (qtd. in Forsyth 75).
For William Kerrigan, “The overall effect of [Fish’s] reading is to promulgate a tyrannical notion of aesthetic unity at the expense of introduction, without overt recognition, a new and unheard-of flaw in the poem: the alarming idea that its mythopoesis is not generative but repetitive, that its similes, metaphors, and symbols tell us nothing about Christianity that the dogmatizing and sermonizing passages of the poem have not told us already” (99).
In other words, we must reject everything from Paradise Lost and learn or experience nothing; other than confirmation of an orthodox response of skepticism and denial. As Bryson writes in The Atheist Milton (2013),
Milton must, I was taught, be read a certain way, and that way requires you, the reader, to reject the evidence of your senses, reject your emotional reactions to the power, beauty, rage, and sadness of Milton’s greatest works, and teach yourself to see as you are being assured that Milton saw—through the eyes of a monolithic, even impervious faith.” (4)
In Tyranny in Heaven (2004), Bryson writes, “to argue against Fish’s cleverly autocratic scheme has been interpreted for too long as somehow to demonstrate both the validity of the scheme and one’s own ‘fallen’ status. The time has come to say ‘enough’ (25). Paradise Lost is not an orthodox poem and it needs to be rescued from orthodox critics” (14).
Even critics who are sympathetic to a satanic reading of Paradise Lost bear traces of orthodoxy. Forsyth’s The Satanic Epic refers to the “seduction” of Satan: “Satan seduces the reader in several ways. . . The text invites the reader to experience that seduction, at times in company with Eve (who falls), most often in company with the narrator (who resists). In spite of
the narrator, or because of him, Satan’s presence as the dominating character makes the text itself, at most of the key moments, inveigling, unreliable, seductive, fascinating” (7).
This stressing of “seduction” already puts us on edge, and warns us to read carefully. It assumes the text is unreliable or shifty; that Satan is a liar and a tempter, who uses empty rhetoric to achieve his aims; that he intends to assert his will over ours—in short it reaffirms all the tenets of orthodoxy that Forsyth’s book aims to refuse.
But what is it about Paradise Lost is so seductive? And why should we assume that resisting is the ethically superior move? And why should ethics have anything to do with our reading of Paradise Lost anyway? Why can’t we just love or hate the characters on their own merits or faults, in line with our personal inclinations?
1.6 Conclusion
In other areas of literary theory, criticism of famous texts generally shifts with en vogue theorists.
Paradise Lost is the exception, and the debate seems to be stuck on whether or not Satan is the hero of the story: whether we should allow ourselves to be stirred by his passion, or laugh at his foolish pretensions. Unfortunately, this seems to be a religious debate, which explains the deliberate and fierce resistance towards the character of Satan, that seems to transgress normal literary criticism and verge into theology.
Milton studies have often threatened to turn into Milton ministries; as the distinction between poetic character and the reader’s (or critic’s) idea of the divine is erased, the difference between literary study and religion devotion becomes disconcertingly hard to detect. (Forsyth 23)
As Robert Adams remarked, “The Christian humanist majority… has [long] held the strong right-center position in Miltonic criticism… against… many antagonists” (qtd. in Rumrich 68).
Dobranksi writes, “once Fish had refuted the romantic vision of Milton as a heroic rebel, religious and critical orthodoxies dovetailed. Scholars who identified and pondered Milton’s religio-political heterodoxy left themselves open to charges of critical heresy from the newly consolidated school of thought” (2). Rumrich called Surprised by Sin “a methodological radical update to Lewis’s reading of Paradise Lost as a literary monument to mainstream Christianity”
(4).
While some contemporary Milton scholarship—such as the “New Milton Criticism”
coined by Peter C. Herman in his 2005 article, “Paradigms Lost, Paradigms Found: The New Milton Criticism,”— is ready to move past the strict, unilateral interpretation of Paradise Lost, it is a mistake to believe this shift is behind us. Herman’s article resists what he called the
“dominant paradigm” of Milton studies, denying both that the poem coheres or that the critic’s task is to make the poem cohere, and concludes by stating,
If C. S. Lewis wrote A Preface to ‘Paradise Lost’ with the intension of preventing
‘the reader from ever raising certain questions,’ the New Milton Criticism encourages all questions, regardless of where the answer will take the reader. (19)
The claims of Herman and the New Milton Criticism were denied by Fish in a keynote address to the Ninth International Milton Symposium in 2008, and continue to be challenged by orthodox voices like David V. Urban. After Herman published a response to Urban in the Milton
Quarterly in 2011, Urban followed with “The Acolyte’s Rejoinder, C.S. Lewis and the New Milton Criticism, Yet Once More,” in which he argues “a clear line must be drawn between legitimately analyzing tensions within an author’s texts and misrepresenting sources in an effort to further one’s argument” (178).
The central conflict between what I call the orthodox or conservative position, and the
“new” Milton criticism, is laid out by Herman in the 2012 book The New Milton Criticism, the aim of which is to “encourage scholars to embrace uncertainties in [Milton’s] writings, rather than attempt to explain them away.” For the “new” critics, there isn’t one way to read a text, and we shouldn’t begin by assuming that Milton’s epic has only one fixed conclusion and purpose.
For the “orthodox” critics, any new readings threaten and challenge decades of painstaking work (by Fish and others) that is based on the idea that Milton’s text is intentionally seductive and shifty. On the surface, the issue is whether critics are allowed and able to seek out new ways of reading the text, other than the mainstream one that dominated Milton studies for half a century;
but the other issue, less obviously stated but central to the controversy, is whether Satan can be considered as heroic, or whether his actions are justified, or any other response to Satan that doesn’t begin by negating a massive portion of Paradise Lost by silencing and refusing its main character.
The problem of Paradise Lost, is that it is too good—so good it might be bad. The fascination with Paradise Lost is keenly felt by all readers, who agree on some sort of
“seduction,” but can’t agree on where this seduction comes from. Milton’s legacy is in asking all the right questions; questions which would change the fate of nations over the next few centuries:
how far should we persist after justice? Is retribution justified? Should dominant forces be obeyed, or resisted? Are there limits to human knowledge?
In order to offer fresh insights on Paradise Lost, we first have to move beyond the simplistic argument of whether Milton’s Satan is a hero, villain or fool—and also stop assuming that his voice is untrustworthy, or that his guilt and punishment are (automatically) justified. In order to do that, in the next chapter we’ll discover what Milton himself thought about the issues
raised in Paradise Lost, which will make it easier to where his own sympathies lie (either deliberate or accidental).
Chapter 2: Biography
2.1 Introduction
It’s not always necessary to consult the biographical details of an author to get insight on a text, however in the case of Paradise Lost, it’s important for several reasons. Firstly, because of the strange controversy surrounding the text that hasn’t seemed to progress after three hundred years of debate. Secondly, the fact that various commenters have either redefined, hidden or confused Milton’s personal beliefs and opinions to agree with their interpretation of Paradise Lost, or dismissed them as inconsequential, should prompt us to look closer. Nicolson writes in Reader’s Milton, “We must constantly be on guard against over-reading any author’s biography or
personal character into his works” (186). This is particularly strange, because you don’t have to look very hard to find Milton’s opinion on the major themes in Paradise Lost which cause controversy.
However, we must also be aware that there is not just one Milton: the devastating and traumatic events of his life will shape and change his core beliefs, so we need to attend carefully to what Milton believed during certain periods of his life. Milton worked on Paradise Lost for many years; so if things seem confusing, it may be because he began a character (Satan, for example) with one objective in mind, and finished it years later, after going through challenges that dramatically shifted his sympathies.
In the following biographical sketch, I’ll skip over most generalities and focus only on the major events and the major writings. I won’t wrestle out interpretations of what he might have meant; the text speaks for itself (as long as we don’t actively subvert it). Most interesting
will be his personal encounters with an unjust, capricious monarchy; the beliefs in the devil and demonic possession shared by his peers; the theme of temptation (and with it, his definitions of
“right” action); his outright refusal of bishops and the Church of England; and his absolute devotion to libertine values.
Writing in 1838, Robert Eldridge Aris Willmott reminds us to remember that “he lived in the midst of the battle, when the passions of men were goaded into fury, when fanaticism
darkened into madness, and the voice of reason was drowned in the tumult of an arming nation”
(83). Milton’s biography is intimately tied with momentous political revolutions and changes happening during his lifetime; not only was he influenced by them, but his writings gave them a voice. Milton’s own commentary—as well as actual influence—on the events of his life will illuminate his own writing and the literature that he inspired.
Most critically, was Milton’s justification for the trial and beheading of King Charles I, and the later restoration of the monarchy which Milton vigorously protested. After using up the last of his failing eyesight as the international voice in defense of England’s new republic, Milton ended up imprisoned and scorned, with his own daughters stealing his books from him to sell. To read Paradise Lost without taking for granted, even assuming, that it reflects his experiences and the politics he lived through is a critical error. This will be a necessarily selective history, of what I deem to be relevant factors in the understanding of Paradise Lost I hope to convey in this thesis. It will also show the political and religious background which gave rise to the various and disturbingly polemic interpretations of Paradise Lost we saw in the preceding chapter.
2.2 Background
Despite Milton’s genius, he is undoubtedly a product of his times, and most of his ideas can be found in the culture, literature and politics immediately preceding him. This section will sketch some of most important issues that will be influential in Milton’s own work. The central conflict Milton will explore during his lifetime, again and again, is the question of free will in the face of evil, the nature of evil, and the problem of evil (if God is both good and omnipotent, why does evil exist?)
For most of the Middle Ages, the devil was seen as the fallen angel, enemy of God, who tempts mankind into sin and then punishes them in Hell. This idea is based on a handful of biblical passages, such as 1 Peter 5:8-9, “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.” The problem with this idea, the problem Milton will grapple with in Paradise Lost, is—did the Devil fall because he was already evil? If not, where did the evil come from? For the Greeks, evil did not exist in nature, there was only the good, and distance from the good which became corrupted in matter. Origen, one of the greatest church Fathers, tried to make Christianity seem less ridiculous to the Greeks by
proposing the doctrine of apokatastasis; that at the end of time, everything would be absorbed back into oneness with God, including the Devil. For this he was attacked by Augustine and posthumously condemned in 543.
Augustine meanwhile, taught that the Devil was real, and powerful, but his dualistic conception of good and evil was heavily influenced by Manichaeism, which believed that the universe was the result of opposing forces of light and darkness. The Catholic church eventually held unto a confusing mixture of these ideas: that God is all powerful, that no evil exists in him, and yet Satan presents a very real danger to humanity by introducing evil. To the common public,
Satan was a monstrous devourer of souls, the source of all pain and suffering. “The human race is the Devil's fruit tree, his own property, from which he may pick his fruit. It is a plaything of demons” (qtd. in Russell 197). However Augustine’s ideas were also heavily influenced by Greek thought, and he also agreed that no evil could be found in God. “Evil is nothing, since God makes everything that is, and God did not make evil.”
This is the idea maintained in the scholastic tradition, which Milton would have been familiar with through his studies at Christ’s Church College at Cambridge University. At the same time, however, belief in witchcraft and devil worship were rampant. Abnormal or deviant behavior of any kind (including heresy) was believed to be the work of the devil, and elaborate fantasies were created to describe the satanic rituals that occurred during nocturnal ceremonies with the devil. These dark and violent descriptions were used by both pagans and Christians to demonize their ideological enemies. Writing at the end of the second century CE, Minucius Felix wrote about what happens during Christian ceremonies:
A child is set before the would-be novice. The novice stabs the child to death. . . . Then they hungrily drink the child’s blood, and compete with one another as they divide his limbs. Through this victim they are bound together; and the fact that they all share this knowledge of the crime pledges them all to silence. On the feast-day
A child is set before the would-be novice. The novice stabs the child to death. . . . Then they hungrily drink the child’s blood, and compete with one another as they divide his limbs. Through this victim they are bound together; and the fact that they all share this knowledge of the crime pledges them all to silence. On the feast-day