Inside paradise lost : reading the designs of Milton's epic

342 Pages·2014·4.9 MB·English

by  Quint

Inside Paradise Lost

Inside Paradise Lost
Reading the Designs of Milton’s Epic
David Quint
Princeton University Press
Princeton and Oxford
copyright © 2014 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William street,
Princeton, new Jersey 08540
in the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 oxford street,
Woodstock, oxfordshire oX20 1tW
press.princeton.edu
All rights reserved
isBn 978-0-691-16191-4 (cloth)
isBn 978-0-691-15974-4 (pbk.)
Library of congress control number: 2013938974
British Library cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
This book has been composed in Minion Pro
Printed on acid-free paper ∞
Printed in the United states of America
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
For James NohrNberg
satan, we would have to say, is the victim of a course
in “the Bible as Literature.”
—nohrnberg, “on Literature and the Bible”

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1. Milton’s Book of numbers: Book 1 and its catalog 15
The Shape of the Catalog 17
Moloch and Belial 1 18
Moloch and saturn 1 19
Moloch and saturn 2: A Miniature Aeneid 20
Moloch and Belial 2: Libya and sodom 22
egypt 23
The Catalog and Pandaemonium 24
The Logic of the Similes in Book 1 26
Raising Devils 29
Appendix: Demonic Swashbucklers 35
2. Ulysses and the Devils: the Unity of Book 2 38
The Council 41
Moloch and Belial Again: Ajax and Ulysses 42
Mammon and Beelzebub: A Thersites Is Rebuked 48
Satan and the Doloneia 50
Meanwhile, Back in Hell . . . 52
Milton’s Telegony 55
Satan’s Odyssey 58
Whose Odyssey? 59
3. Fear of Falling: icarus, Phaethon, and Lucretius 63
Icarus and Satan’s Fall Through Chaos 64
virgil and Lucretius 64
Dante, tasso, ovid 67
satan voyager 71
Phaethon, the Son, and the War in Heaven 75
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viii | Contents
Flight and Fall 85
A Poetry Against Falling 88
4. Light, vision, and the Unity of Book 3 93
Structure and Design 96
Universal Blank 99
Vision 106
The Sun 109
The Paradise of Fools 111
Sun Worshippers 114
Poetry and Science 118
5. the Politics of envy 122
Envy and the New Dispensation 124
Angels and Courtiers 132
Brotherhood versus Kingship in Books 11–12 144
6. Getting What you Wish For: A reading of the Fall 153
The Seduction of Eve 156
The Second Adam as Second Eve 169
Adam’s Choice: “One flesh” 176
“Not vastly disproportionall” 185
Changing Places 188
Appendix: A Note on the Separation Scene 195
7. reversing the Fall in Book 10 197
Virgilian Coordinates and the End of Satan 200
creation and Anti-creation 202
Anti-triumphs 203
The triumphs of the son 206
satan’s triumph 208
Adam and the Winds 211
The Recovery of Human Choice 212
Cherishing Eve 218
Dido and Armida; creusa 219
Pandora 223
The exposed Matron 229
8. Leaving eden 234
Deconsecrated Earth 236
Good-bye 245
Notes 249
Bibliography 285
Index 301
Acknowledgments
i have been fortunate to have written this book in the company of many friends
and scholars. i thank first of all my yale University colleagues, a remarkable
group of Miltonists to find in one place, and, much more, a group of exception-
ally generous and caring people: Lawrence Manley, John rogers, Annabel Pat-
terson, Leslie Brisman, and Harold Bloom. They have read all or sizable parts
of the book, including more than a few of its false starts. i am grateful for their
incisive comments and encouragement, for the example of their own scholar-
ship, and, above all, for their friendship. other yale friends, David Bromwich
and Alexander Welsh, read and criticized the introduction and have helped me
to make it more shapely.
earlier versions of chapters and parts of chapters of this book have appeared
in journal articles. They are reused here with the permission of the journals and
their publishers. chapter 1 appeared as “Milton’s Book of numbers: Book 1 of
Paradise Lost and its catalogue,” International Journal of the Classical Tradition
13.4 (2007): 528–49, copyright © 2004, springer, with kind permission from
springer science+Business Media; chapter 2 as “Ulysses and the Devils: The
Unity of Book two of Paradise Lost,” Milton Studies 49 (2009): 20–48, copyright
© 2008, University of Pittsburgh Press, by permission of the present publisher,
Duquesne University Press; chapter 3 as “Fear of Falling: icarus, Phaethon, and
Lucretius in Paradise Lost,” Renaissance Quarterly 57 (2004): 847–81, copyright
© 2004, the renaissance society of America, inc., by permission from the Uni-
versity of chicago Press; chapter 4 as “ ‘Things invisible to Mortal sight:’ Light,
vision and the Unity of Book 3 of Paradise Lost,” Modern Language Quarterly
71.3 (2010): 249–69, copyright © 2010, University of Washington, by permis-
sion from the present publisher, Duke University Press; and parts of chapter
7 as “The virgilian coordinates of Paradise Lost,” Materiali e discussioni per
l’analisi dei testi classici 52 (2004): 177–97, copyright © istituti editoriali e
Poligrafici internazionali, by permission of the publisher. i am grateful to the
journal readers—i wish to remember the late richard Durocher—and the
journal editors, especially Paul Grendler, Marshall Brown, Glenn W. Most, and
sarah spence. Their work improved my thought and writing.
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