William Poole - Milton and the Making of Paradise Lost

This book is an accessible introduction to and interpretation of the writing of the greatest single poem in the English language, John Miltons epic Paradise Lost (1667, second edition 1674). In offering an account of the making of Paradise Lost, this book is partly biographical and partly critical. Those interested predominantly in history may consider this something of a stealth biography, and may accordingly regret that I spend comparatively little time addressing, say, Miltons public, political life as an employee of successive interregnum regimes. On the other hand, those who seek a complete reading of Miltons poetry may miss a sustained analysis of, say, Samson Agonistes or Paradise Regained. I can only hope that the biography-of-a-poem hybrid that I have attempted possesses its own kind of coherence, and indeed that my manner of tying biographical concerns so closely to literary production will, after all, help to illuminate what an extraordinary achievement Miltons Paradise Lost is. I have also essayed in several chapters and an appendix to provide what are in effect reference guides to certain topics, notably Miltons known syllabus as a teacher, his theology, the evolution of his dramatic drafts, and the intricacies of the publication process of Paradise Lost. Some of these are rather technical, but then Milton was a technical man.

The particular focus of this study is on Milton as a reader and scholar, and indeed on how much of this scholarship was provoked and enhanced by his occupation as a teacher. To this extent my approach is, in Part 1, Milton, more scholarly than critical, but Mercury can only speak with authority when Minerva speaks with him. Nevertheless, Part 2, Paradise Lost, I hope, becomes increasingly critical as I lead the reader into some of the complexities of Paradise Losts internal construction and interpretation. For me Milton is above all a late, perhaps even a belated, humanist, but one with pronounced Hellenistic (he would perhaps have said Alexandrian) tastes, and a scholar who, sensitive to the times, and led on by his own massive self-esteema compound seemingly coined by Milton himselfdrew some markedly radical conclusions from his reading. I have also tried to deal with the literary impact of some practical problems for Milton, most profoundly the total blindness to which he succumbed in 1652. That, to me, is the emotional core of this book. Conversely, I have only tangentially engaged with the politics of Paradise Lost, a notoriously inconclusive venture, not because I deny the political dimension of this poem or indeed of Miltons life as a poet, but simply because it has been done to death and it is time now to vary our critical accents. For the same reason I have tried to deviate from some of the more well-trod routes up the Miltonic mountain, stepping round Miltons Maske and his pastoral elegy Lycidas, and providing instead a slightly more unusual route through his shorter poems.

Finally, it may be objected that to treat Miltons intellectual development as preparation for his great epic is Procrustean, Whiggish, and slavishly influenced by how Milton himself directed us to appraise his development. To this I answer that were this truly a biography, these criticisms would hit home. But my intention is to explain the genesis of a poem and how its writer came to be in a position to write it. I start and conclude this project, that is to say, with a conviction that the poem is paramount, and if I have managed to persuade readers not so well acquainted with Paradise Lost that it would be a good thing to become more so, I shall have succeeded. In short, I have tried hard not to speak solely to the community of experts.

This book was written in the summer vacation of 2016, but it is informed by some longer-term research, especially for my forthcoming editions of Miltons commonplace book and that section of the Trinity College manuscript in which Milton noted down dozens of ideas for prospective dramas. I have also relied on the research done for a few previous publications of my own; in particular the section on Miltons theology revisits themes developed in an earlier piece on Miltons Theology.

As befits this kind of book, I havewith mixed successtried to curb my references, although I have been free with bibliographical information in the chapters closest to reference guides. I am painfully aware that the more general the book on the more major the writer, the more one ends up repeating ones more talented colleagues, often unawares. I would, however, like to acknowledge here the debt all writers on Paradise Lost continue to owe to Alastair Fowlers superb annotations for his Longman edition. Over the last several years, I have been deeply influenced by my friend Nicholas McDowells ability to get Miltonic poetry and biography talking to one another, and I would also like to express my admiration for the criticism of John Leonard, David Quint, and John Rumrich. Rumrich in particular has done me several good turns now. I have relied heavily on the biographical tradition, most recently and notably Gordon Campbell and Tom Cornss John Milton: Life, Work, and Thought (2008), a work of great acumen, although I prefer Jeffrey Millers recent restatement of the young Miltons religiopolitical milieu as that of a conformable puritan.

Six friendly experts read parts or all of this manuscript at short notice. Thus I am deeply indebted for comments furnished by Gordon Campbell, Tom Corns, Edward Jones, and Nigel Smith; and I am especially fortunate to have had the whole text poked and prodded in almost medical detail by Zoe Hawkins and Jeffrey Miller. My readers for Harvard University Press produced unusually useful reports, for which I am also most grateful. Among the publishers, Mark Richards first suggested the project, and at Harvard, I thank my sympathetic editor, John Kulka, for allowing me to write this book when I had promised him a different one.