Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T23:55:08.369Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

8 - Milton and the rationale of insulting

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 October 2009

Stephen B. Dobranski
Affiliation:
Georgia State University
John P. Rumrich
Affiliation:
University of Texas, Austin
Get access

Summary

Most writers on Milton's political prose sidestep its voluminous insults. Some Milton scholars deplore them because they are not only numerous but cover the entire range of mudslinging. Worse still, they suspect he enjoyed it. Others simply ignore the insulting, as unworthy of the poet or of their own attention. Historians, though very interested these days in Milton's radical politics or heretical dogmatics, nonetheless speed past the insults as subordinate to the deeds and agents of those lively years, 1642–60. Here, therefore, I call attention to his gems of vituperation, because they show us a side of Milton that we tend to ignore. In his insults, their humor and their offensiveness alike, he is making deliberate stylistic choices and revealing his character as a rhetor. Applying to his occasions of insulting the resources of his reading and his vivid imagination, he shows himself hairetikos in the primary sense: the Greek word first meant “able to choose.”

Particularly in the Latin of the First Defence (1651) Milton chooses to present a humanist self to European readers. In an authentically classical manner, he persuades not only through his argument but also by giving pleasure, the peculiar pleasure that pertains to adept insult and its mingling of delight and instruction. This is not to imply that only then, in 1651, did he vituperate in public. He uncovers a lively vein of abusive satire in the university prolusions and his antiprelatical tracts. He unleashes choice Anglo-Saxon phrases, often involving derogatory animal imagery, in Colasterion and other English polemics of the 1640s. Insults also figure in memorable episodes of Paradise Lost and Samson Agonistes.

Type
Chapter
Information
Milton and Heresy , pp. 159 - 175
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×