MILTON’S GRAND STYLE

Sublimity of thought and grandeur of style mark Milton’s verse, where matter, meaning and melody blend harmoniously together. Milton is vexed with rhyme and advocates the free use of epic verse (blank verse) so that he may explore all possibilities of poetic expression. He considered rhyme to be an invention of a barbarous age and no necessary adjunct or ornament to a poem. Milton improved upon the blank verse used by Shakespeare and his followers: he added latinisms, inversions, periphrases, and other paraphernalia. Critics do not take the same view of this innovative blank verse. Blank verse is known for its concentration and flexibility, and Milton deprived it of these qualities. But those readers who value the ceremonical aloofness of epic verse hold that these sacrifices were worthwhile. Miltonic epic verse, cannot even be compared to dramatic blank verse – the former is heroic and used for achieving a grandeur and loftiness that suited Milton’s themes.

Milton’s verse is highly stylized, effortlessly perfected by a mastermind. It is written in magnificent, majestic language and its sound and gait are unparalleled in English poetry. The management of sound and stress creates a sonorous effect. In spite of the many latinisms and allusions, Milton’s verse is strikingly simple and beautiful. The poet is never obscure in his lines; he is always lucid. Milton often varies his style to relieve the reader from monotony. C.S. Lewis said of his style that “it is a grand great stream upon which we are embarked.” Milton’s similes impress the readers intellectually, aesthetically and physically – they are not only appropriate to the situations but also open up a new world of myths, fables and classical allusions. Miltonic similes, though classical, are very original and different. Here the vehicle of course resembles the tenor, but the simile does not stop there. Many more points of interest are quickly and successively brought in, creating a rich matrix of comparisons. Sound, meaning, thought and feeling get integrated. These similes are also digressive and echo mythology as well as a great tradition of literature which the epic falls back upon. Pope said rightly of his style: “what oft was thought but never so well expressed”. It can probably be argued that Milton’s Grand Style does not suit lighter themes. But Milton was a man of solemn thought and there is not one line that he has written in the lighter vein. All his works deal with serious themes in a classical manner. They are carefully calculated to produce a mighty impression upon the ear, mind and imagination of men of scholarship. That they did superbly well, and they shall continue so in the days to come.

JOHN MILTON

In his youth (as seen in his Latin epistle to Diodati – Epitaphium Damonis) Milton was a gentle and sociable youth, a lover of music, dancing, women, plays and country pleasures; at the same time studious, religious, high-minded and modest, a man of Protestant views. His early works include L’Allegro and IlPenseroso, Arcades, Comus and Lycidas. The first two of these offer a quintessence of English life, and the contrast in these 2 poems is that of 2 moods. Under one influence a man seeks light-hearted mirth. He delights in the cheerful sights and sounds of the morning, in the hay time and the harvest, in the simple feasts of the country folk. If he has left the country for the town, his pleasure is in pomps and pageants, in sumptuous weddings, in comedies and masques. Under the other influence he loves the quietude of the country, the trim garden in the repose of evening, the study of astronomy and philosophy, the sterner side of poetry the more religious notes of music. Arcades and Comus (a masque presented at Ludlow Castle) were set to music by Henry Lawes. Appearing after the publication of Prynne’s Histriomastix (a Puritan work attacking stage plays) they show that Milton did not share the extreme Puritan view that drama is evil in itself. Not the use of the dramatic form but its misuse was the evil. Comus is Milton’s first exercise in blank verse. Lycidas is a pastoral elegy on the death of Edward King. In this poem Milton refers to the myths of the ancient world, the teachings of Christianity and the political and ecclesiastical problems of Milton’s own time. Milton’s sonnets are in the Petrarchan form, 5 of them being written in Latin. Many of the sonnets serve as outlets to the deep poetic feeling which only awaited leisure for the making of a great work. Milton returned to poetry in the last phase of his career. The epic poem Paradise lost, originally in 10 books and subsequently rearranged in 12, was, first printed in 1667. Summary of the poem

Bk I - The poet states his theme (the Fall of Man through Disobedience) and his aim (to justify the ways of God to men). The defeated archangel Satan and Beelzebub are seen to be in the burning lake of hell. Satan convenes a council and his palace Pandemonium is built.

Bk II - The Council debates over the means of revenge. Beelzebub announces the creation of earth and man. Satan undertakes to visit earth alone.

Bk III - Milton invokes celestial light to illumine the darkness of his eyes. God is described and his success as well as the fall of man through free will is foretold. The Son of God offers himself as a ransom and is exalted as the Saviour. Satan alights on earth.

Bk IV - Satan overhears the conversation of Adam and Eve about the Forbidden tree of Knowledge and resolves to tempt them.

Bk V - Eve has a dream of temptation inspired by Satan. Raphael, sent by God, warns Adam about the temptation. Raphael’s narration about Satan’s rebellion.

Bk VI - Raphael’s narration.

Bk VII - Raphael’s narration ends with the creation of the earth and man.

Bk VIII - Adam talks of his life in Eden, the creation of Eve, etc.

Bk IX - Satan tempts in the body of a serpent, Eve brings Adam to the Forbidden fruit; Adam, recognizing that she is doomed, resolves to perish with her; they eat the fruit, lose innocence.

Bk X - Adam and Eve confess before the Son of God.

Bk XI - Michael relates to them their future—the death of Abel, Flood, the New Covenant.

Bk XII – Michael narrates the rest of the O.T. and the corrupt state of the Church until the Second Coming.

In Paradise Lost Milton tried to do away with the fictitious element which he saw in the great epics of Greece. He could not foresee an age to which the story of Adam would appear a mere myth. But this resolve deprived his own work of freshness and diverted him from the evergreen themes of the passions and purposes of man. The verse of Paradise Lost shows a spontaneous ease and is the natural product of previous thought. Paradise Lost was first designed as a drama and it still has a strong dramatic element, especially in the characterization of Satan. Dryden, as well as later critics, have said that Satan is the hero of the poem.

As yielding to the temptation had brought the Fall of Man, so in Paradise Regained Milton presents the foiling of temptation as the cause of man’s restoration. In the earlier work there is unity, but not simplicity. Milton’s taste, growing ever simpler, preferred Paradise Regained, because its theme has unity as well as simplicity. But the later work is far below in greatness and is a mere repetition of the theme of eternal conflict between good and evil.

For Samson Agonistes, published along with Paradise Regained, Milton took a hero whose physical affliction was the same as his own. Though a closet drama modelled on Greek tragedy, critics have claimed that its spirit is more Hebraic (or Christian) than Hellenic. As a writer, Milton’s towering stature was recognized early. Although appreciated as a master of polemical prose as well as of subtle lyric harmony, his reputation rests largely on Paradise Lost, which Dryden described as “one of the greatest, most noble and sublime poems which either this age or nation has produced”. Poets and critics of the 18th century were profoundly influenced by Milton’s use of blank verse and his treatment of the Sublime. But even then there were murmurs of dissent from Dr. Johnson, Addison, Bentley and others. Blake, in his The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, commented that Milton was “the Devil’s party without knowing it”. Shelley regarded Satan as the real hero of the poem. In the 20th century, T.S. Eliot was a strong critic of Milton.

THE PAMPHLETEERS and STORY–TELLERS

Greene: A short-lived but most prolific author, Robert Greene, followed Lyly’s style and the model of pastoral romance set by Sidney in a number of love-stories, of which Pandosto, or Dorastus and Fawnia gave Shakespeare materials for The Winter’s Tale; and then began a series of non–descript works, half–novel and half-descriptive articles, which give vivid glimpses of the seamy side of Elizabethan life. Much of his work is didactic and written in the Euphuistic style.

Lodge: Thomas Lodge’s stories belong to the same class as Greene’s sentimental idylls and are written in aneuphuistic style. His most  pleasing work is Rosalynde in which he retold the old English tale of Gamelyn and provided a plot and figures that required only to be developed into characters in As You Like It.

Nashe: Thomas Nashe, like Greene a fellow at Cambridge, and very like Greene in his short and merry life, wrote pamphlets like Christ’s Tears  over Jerusalem that are more successful than Greene’s in sketching London life and character. The Unfortunate Traveller is perhaps the first regular picaresque story in English, in which an English page has rambling adventures all over Europe including Germany, France and Italy.

Historical characters such as Surrey, Erasmus and Sir Thomas More figure in the story. The most realistic of Elizabethan ‘novels’, it nevertheless shows how difficult it still was to artistically blend the actual and the imaginative. This, in fact, is the common defect of Elizabethan fiction. [As an analytical portrayal of life, Euphues prefigures the modern novel; but it does this ineffectively, and its style marks it, as the Arcadia is marked, as a late attempt to reinvigorate an obsolete genre – the romance] Of all Elizabethan attempts at the novel, The Unfortunate Traveller does indeed show the nearest approximation to future. Nashe cared more for vigour than elegance. He gave up euphuism after his early works, and wrote novels in the style of a pamphleteer. His style is marked by the vehemence of feeling as well as his instinctive fondness for alliteration and compound epithets.

Dekker: Thomas Dekker, the author of The Bachelors’ Banquet, wrote pamphlets in the style of Greene and Nashe. In The Seven Deadly Sins of London he produced some good realism and a vigorous style. Other ‘novelists’ of this period include Nicholas Breton, Emanuel Ford and Thomas Deloney. Much pamphleteering of this period was in connection with the Martin Marprelate controversy between the Puritans and the high Anglicans.

BEN JONSON

Ben Jonson was a dramatist, poet, scholar and writer of court masques. In his youth he joined a strolling company of players for whom he acted the part of Hieronimo in The Spanish Tragedy, a play for which he wrote additional scenes. He is said to have been fearless and quarrelsome, and once was charged of murder. He was probably one of the members of the Friday Street Club (one of the earliest of English Clubs) which met at the Mermaid Tavern and which included Shakespeare, Selden, Donne, Beaumont and Fletcher. (This Club was founded by Ralegh) Jonson’s first important play, with Shakespeare in its cast, was Every Man in His Humour. It was followed by Every Man Out of His Humour and Cynthia’s Revels. His first extant tragedy is Sejanus and his first court masque The Masque of Blackness written for Queen Anne who appears as a negress in the masque. At this time Jonson, along with Chapman and Marston, wrote Eastward Hoe, and Chapman and Jonson were imprisoned, for the comedy contained a passage derogatory of the Scots. Then followed his major plays— Volpone or The Fox, which contains the famous characters Mosca and Corbaccio, Epicene or The Silent Woman, which contains the characters Morose and Cutbeard, (Dryden thought this the most perfectly plotted of all comedies), The Alchemist, with characters like Dame Pliant and Lovewit, and Bartholomew Fair. His later plays—The Devil is an Ass, A Tale of a Tub (Swift has written a work of the same name), etc. show a reliance on allegory and symbolism. The genre of court–masque reached its perfection in Jonson’s hands. He introduced into it the ‘anti-masque’, an antithetical, usually disorderly, prelude to the main action which served to highlight and contrast the central theme of political and social harmony. His Pleasure Reconciled toVirtue gave Milton his idea for Comus. His non-dramatic verse includes a translation of Horace’s Ars Poetica.

Jonson was a favourite of King James I, hence his prolific output of masques]. His 2nd tragedy is Catiline. Every Man in his Humour marked an epoch in the history of drama; no comedy had ever appeared with a more self-conscious flourish. In this play, the young playwright emerged with a revolutionary manifesto, in which a new theory of comedy was put into practice. Jonson’s theory of a Comedy of Humours is expounded in the prologue to the play where a ‘humour’ is the embodiment in one of the character of some dominating individual passion. The cardinal humours, as suggested by medieval thinkers, whose balance was thought to determine a man’s nature, were blood, phlegm, choler (yellow bile) and melancholy (black bile). In the prologue Jonson criticizes romantic drama which allows the most ridiculous improbabilities of plot and scene. As a classical scholar he preferred to adhere to the unities. He was against melodrama and farce, and advocated realism which would confine comedy to an image of the times. Jonson’s theory was supported by a vigorous display of learning and reason. Yet his plays are little read or enacted, and are as good as dead except to the student of literature. This is because his method is laboriously pedantic and his characters, in whom one or the other of the humours exceed to result in a folly or affection, are highly artificial. His plays, though they laugh at the ‘humour’ of the characters, fail to amuse and lack in the shaping spirit of imagination.