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English 329
Milton
Wendy Furman-Adams
The 1645 Poems: Observations and Questions to
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Some general
observations and questions:
1. Pastoral Tradition before Milton--from the
Greeks to the Renaissance.
With the exception of the sonnets published in
1645, all the poems we are reading from Milton's
earliest published volume--and many of those we
are not reading--can be described as "pastoral,"
or at least belong in some way to pastoral
traditions.
Pastoral (whatever its form) at least ostensibly
celebrates the simple rural life of shepherds.
Shepherds, as constructed by pastoral poets, are
natural poets and lovers. Their sheep represent
both work and care, provision and nurture. They
live simply but are content with what they
have--in harmony with nature and its seasons.
They suffer from no pride or avarice or
ambition; love is their main concern, apart from
their healthy and life-supporting labor.
The Greek poet Theocritus (ca. 303- ca. 240
B.C.E.) is generally credited with the invention
of the genre, as well as with establishing its
basic forms: songs, singing contests, love
poetry (both hetero-and homo-erotic, both
playful and serious), and, perhaps most
importantly, pastoral elegy.
The elegy, beginning with Theocritus, typically
has seven parts or aspects: an invocation to the
pastoral muse; a call to mourners; a lament on
the finitude of our lives as opposed to the
perpetual cycle of nature; an introduction of
the "pathetic fallacy"; nymphs (who are often
rebuked for letting the shepherd or shepherdess
die--often by water); a catalogue of flowers and
procession of mourners; and an apotheosis of the
dead shepherd.
Question: Taking a close look at Theocritus' "Thyrsis'
Lament for Daphnis," can you find these main
elements of the form? How many of them can you
find in Milton's "Lycidas"? (Write some notes in
response to this question in your notebook.)
Following Theocritus, Moschus, a second
third-century Hellenistic poet used the form of
the pastoral elegy to write specifically about
the death of a poet (his contemporary "Bion").
Question: Taking a close look at his "Lament for Bion," what do you see Moschus has borrowed from
Theocritus; what has changed---especially in
voice and tone? (Notice, for starters, that this
poem is not a dialogue, but a monody. Whom do
you see to be the speaker?) How do these changes
inform "Lycidas"? Write these observations in
your notebook.
Then, in the first century B.C.E., the Roman
poet Virgil (70-19 B.C.E.) first established
pastoral eclogue as (1) a kind of warm-up for
the really serious business of epic; and (2) a
genre in which one can use aspects of country
life to explore (and even analyze) serious
topical issues moving far beyond the lives of
shepherds and goatherds.
Pastoral, with its celebration of a bygone era
of innocence, is by definition a kind of
criticism of the sophisticated (often corrupt
and violent) urban world. But before Virgil that
criticism was merely implied--rarely stated.
Virgil actually takes up such issues as that of
returning soldiers displacing shepherds from
their ancestral lands (Eclogue 1)--or of the
birth of a child of the Senatorial class whom he
hopes will bring about a second Golden Age for
the great empire of Rome. His pastoral poems, in
short, are not just about the cycles of nature,
but about the march of history and the very real
issues of his day.
Question: Notice how very different the tone of
his Eclogue IV from the artful simplicity of
Theocritus' poem. How is it different? List some
ways in your notebook. (Notice, too, that the
poem is future-oriented rather than nostalgic
for a lost, long-ago golden age.) How does this
poem inform Milton's equally forward-looking
Nativity Ode?
The Bible is also an important source for
pastoral poetry--embodied not only in the idea
of the Garden of Eden, but in the Song of Songs
and in the Good Shepherd of the twenty-third
psalm. In the New Testament Jesus refers to
himself both as the Good Shepherd and the Lamb
of God who lays down his life for the sheep (his
people)--using pastoral, like Virgil,
allegorically to talk about much larger ethical,
political, and spiritual concepts.
Pastoral survived as a very minor genre through
the European Middle Ages--to burst into a second
Golden Age with the Renaissance.
Question: Why might that be?
During the sixteenth century, countless French
and Italian poets wrote pastorals in various
forms. Just as important for Milton, however,
are Shakespeare's pastoral plays (A Midsummer
Night's Dream, As you Like It, The Tempest, A
Winter's Tale) and Edmund Spenser's Shepheardes
Calendar (1579), which is made up of twelve
eclogues featuring English shepherds. The
November Eclogue (which you have) is a pastoral
elegy with a Christian apotheosis (interesting
to compare with Theocritus), and others of the
eclogues contain explicit social criticism--two
strands, notice, that Milton combines in one
poem: "Lycidas."
2. Pastoral in Milton's 1645 Poems.
Nativity Ode:
How does the Nativity Ode draw on pastoral
tradition to explore the implications of the
Christ child's incarnation? Notice the scene,
the characters, the foretold narrative, the use
of classical allusion throughout, and compare
the poem not just with Virgil's Eclogue IV, but
also with the poem in your hand-out by Richard
Crashaw: "In the Nativity of our Lord Jesus
Christ: A Song as Sung by the Shepherds."
(Herbert and Vaughan's poems also provide
interesting, although less exact, comparisons.)
A Mask at Ludlow Castle (Comus):
Notice the rural setting, the disguises of the
Attendant Spirit and of Comus--and the Lady's
argument on the right use of wealth, among other
things. How does the world of the forest
function for Milton as an arena for social
comment and reflection? And what kind of world
does the attendant spirit return to at the end
of the poem? Does that world bear any relation
to the world you have encountered in other
pastoral poems? (Return to this question at the
end of "Lycidas" as well.)
"Lycidas":
Without a doubt the pre-eminent pastoral elegy
in English. (See also Shelley's "Adonais,"
written on the occasion of the death of Keats
and Matthew Arnold's "Thyrsis," written on the
occasion of the death of his good friend Arthur
Hugh Clough.)
The "digressions," however, have irritated some
critics--including Samuel Johnson in the
eighteenth century. Can you defend their
inclusion in terms of the genre of pastoral?
What does Milton gain by singing for his drowned
friend in the guise of an "uncouth swain"? What
does the pastoral landscape, and the pastoral
metaphor, add to the elegy? Or does it add
anything?
"L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso":
One of the themes of pastoral poetry is the
"pathetic fallacy": the idea that nature is
somehow in harmony with human feelings and
desires. How does Milton use natural images in
these companion poems to embody two very
different states of the human psyche? What is
the purpose, do you think, of this kind of
poetic balancing act?
3. Nature and Supernature in Milton's Poems:
Each of the poems mentioned above also shares a
complex view of nature and human nature--benign
when in tune with the divine realm (whether that
realm is defined in Platonic or in Christian
terms), but corruptible by evil.
Think about how this theme of redeemed, as
opposed to fallen and corrupt, nature plays out
through the Nativity Ode and the Mask in
particular, but to some extent in all five
poems.
4. Masque and the Visual Arts in Milton's Poems:
As Milton well knew, the Latin poet/critic
Horace had written ut pictura poesis--"As with a
painting, so poetry": the idea that poetry is a
kind of painting with words, as the visual arts
are a kind of poetry made with paint, stone,
costumes, and stagecraft.
Look at the incredible array of visual imagery
in these poems--and make some lists in your
notebook from each.
Notice how "meek-eyed peace" descends as if onto
a courtly stage; how the Lady actually refers to
stage props in her own masque; how the mourners
in Lycidas "enter the stage" of the poem; etc.
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