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Composed
November, 1637.
Milton 28, nearly 29 -- nearing the end of his
five-year "retirement" at Horton (mastering
philosophy, history, theology, the Bible and the
classics, modern science, etc.) and soon to
leave on his Italian journey.
Published in 1638, the final poem of thirty-six
in a commemorative volume in memory of Edward
King, a Cambridge friend drowned in August 1637
(three months earlier). Poems in Latin and
English. Only one, according to Flannagan, worth
our time now.
"Lycidas" marks Milton's awareness of the
approaching end of his poetic apprenticeship,
just as the Nativity Ode marks his initial
self-consecration to sacred poetry.
Like the Nativity Ode, too, it is a Christian
pastoral, fusing classical and Christian modes
and allusions throughout.
Pastoral Elegy
Seven conventional elements:
Invocation of the Muses ("Sisters of the Sacred
Well" of Helicon).
Lament of a shepherd for the death of his
companion.
The sorrowing of Nature (the pathetic fallacy).
The mourning of various mythological figures.
Catalogue of flowers.
Apotheosis (though not in the earliest pastoral
elegies).
Consolation and reintegration into daily life.
More than conventional concern: What is the
meaning of life (or can there be any) when all
its promise is abruptly cut off for the best of
us, while the careless and greedy often seem to
go on prospering?
The question not just about Edward King, but
about Milton himself (note ll. 19 - 22).
Like the sonnet, the ode, and the masque, Milton
here makes yet another sub-genre entirely his
own.
Important Models:
1. Theocritus (c. 303-c. 240 B.C.E.)
"Thyrsis's Lament for Daphnis" (from the
Idylls).
Sicilian Greek living in Alexandria in the third
century B.C.E. (very nostalgic era). Writes from
an urban center about an ideal rural world. But
"et in Arcadia ego."
2. Moschus (third century B.C.E.)
"Lament for Bion"
3. Edmund Spenser (1552 - 1599)
"November Eclogue" (from The Shepheardes
Calendar).
(see 1611 edition)
"Lycidas": Genre and Imagery
Dramatic monody (not a singing match)--but with
a frame to make up ten verse paragraphs in all.
Questions:
Who is the speaker?
Who is his audience?
What is the situation?
on the surface?
underlying?
Pastoral elegy a kind of emotional readjustment,
analogous (and preparatory) to epic and tragedy
(both of which Milton will write in the
"fullness of time").
Initial situation: "Lycidas is dead . . ." to l.
165 ff.
The poem--"the meed of some melodious tear" to
ll. 180 - 85.
Notice the water imagery throughout the poem:
tears
river
lake
sea, waves
tears
Altogether they make up a baptism of a
poet-priest into death and rebirth, leading to
consolation for the loss of both, as well as
finally for the human being Edward King.
Structure:
1. Invocation of the muses (with a Virgilian
heightening of the subject above pastoral).
2. Memory as the Mother of the Muses: Arcadian
memories of Cambridge.
3. Change brought by death ("as killing as the
canker to the rose")--pathetic fallacy.
4. Rebuke of the nymphs.
5. The "digression on fame": the pastor felix
vs. the pastor bonum--and the first strand of
consolation (Phoebus).
6 - 7. Procession of Mourners:
Triton (classical)
Camus (English)
Peter (biblical)--and "digression" on the
corrupt clergy "then at their height"--
and the second strand of consolation (Peter's
prophecy).
8. Catalogue of flowers (back to pure
English-Sicilian mode).
9. Consolation and apotheosis:
Lycidas is genius of the shore (as poet, like
Orpheus before him).
He has joined the marriage feast of the Lamb (as
priest, at the ultimate Eucharist).
See Matthew 15.22 - 34; Romans 6.3-5; Revelation
21.2 - 5.
10. The uncouth swain moves on, as shadows
lengthen.
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