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Allegory and Verisimilitude in Paradise Lost: The Problem of the “Impossible Credible”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

John M. Steadman
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Extract

If “much adverse criticism has been spent on [Milton's] allegorical figures of Sin and Death,” the blame lies less with the poet or his critics than with time—with the evolution of poetic theory and its inevitable corollary, the relativity of critical standards. The principles underlying the composition of Paradise Lost are by no means identical with those by which the poem has been judged. In the case of much neo-classical criticism, this disparity is particularly significant, as its basic assumptions are often so close to Milton's that one overlooks their actual divergence.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 78 , Issue 1 , March 1963 , pp. 36 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1963

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References

Note 1 in page 36 James Thorpe, ed., Milton Criticism: Selections from Four Centuries (London, 1956), p. 141; Walter Raleigh, Milton (London, 1900), pp. 237–238.

Note 2 in page 36 The Spectator, ed. G. Gregory Smith, n (London, 1951), pp. 408, 451. Addison adds, however, that critical judgment requires acquaintance not only “with the French and Italian Criticks, but also with the Antient [sic] and Moderns who have written in either of the learned Languages,” and condemns the critical pretensions of the writer who merely extracts “a few general Rules … out of the French Authors” (pp. 368–369).

Note 3 in page 36 Thorpe, p. 72.

Note 4 in page 36 Spectator, pp. 294–297, 312–315, 330, 350–352, 385–386, 451,470.

Note 5 in page 36 Thorpe, p. 83. In the “main fabrick” of the poem, however, Johnson finds no contradiction between the probable and the marvellous (pp. 74–75).

Note 6 in page 36 Spectator, pp. 386, 432, 452; nevertheless, in Addison's opinion, Milton reconciles the probable and the marvellous elsewhere in the poem (pp. 408,451-452).

Note 7 in page 36 The Prose Works of John Milton, ii (Bohn Library, London, 1883), p. 478. For Milton's poetic theory, see Ida Langdon, Milton's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art (New Haven, 1924).

Note 8 in page 36 Milton, Prose Works, in, pp. 473–474. John Dennis clearly exaggerates the irregularity of Milton's epic and his alleged resolution “to break thro' the Rules of Aristotle” (Thorpe, pp. 344–345).

Note 9 in page 37 Mario Rossi, éd., Discorso di Giacopo Mazzoni in Difesa délia “Commedia” del Divino Poeta Dante (Citta di Castello, 1898), pp. 31–36.

Note 10 in page 37 Jacopo Mazzoni, Delia Difesa délia Comedia di Dante, Parte Prima (Cesena, 1587), pp. 416–417; Introduction, Nos. 61, 63–64, 84–85, 96–97. For Mazzoni's elaboration of the Platonic distinction between icastic and phantastic imitation, see pp. 391–417; Introduction, Nos. 16–27.

Note 11 in page 37 Pp. 417 ff.

Note 12 in page 37 Aristotle on the Art of Poetry, tr. Ingram Bywater (Oxford, 1951), pp. 87, 91; cf. p. 84, “A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing impossibility.” See Mazzoni's Discorso, pp. 31–37; Difesa, p. 403; Introduction, No. 47.

Note 13 in page 37 Bywater, p. 85.

Note 14 in page 37 Difesa, pp. 586–591.

Note 15 in page 38 In the Difesa, pp. 572–574, 591–592, Mazzoni defends Prodicus' personifications of Virtue and Delight and similar abstractions in Prudentius, St. Gregory Nazianzen, and others, on the basis of allegory.

Note 16 in page 38 Cf. Bywater, pp. 84, 91; Difesa, p. 417; Elizabethan Critical Essays, ed. G. Gregory Smith, ? (London, 1950), pp. 392–393; Lodovico Castelvetro, Paetica d'Aristotele Vul-garizzata, et S posta (Basilea, 1576), pp. 664, 668; J. E. Spingarn, A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance (New York, 1925).

Note 17 in page 38 The sources, analogues, and meaning of these passages have received detailed discussion in the annotated editions by Newton, Todd, Varity, Hughes, and others. Among recent studies, see Harry F. Robins, “That Unnecessary Shell of Milton's World,” Studies in Honor of T. W. Baldwin (Urbana, 111., 1958), pp. 211–219; George W. Whiting, Milton and This Pendant World (Austin, Texas, 1958); John M. Patrick, Milton's Conception of Sin as Developed in Paradise Lost (Logan, Utah, 1960).

Note 18 in page 38 Discorso, p. 31.

Note 19 in page 38 Castelvetro, p. 582; Horace, De Arte Poetica, lines 1–4. Cf. Dryden's Essays, ed. W. H. Hudson (London, 1954), pp. 114115, “But how are poetical fictions, how are hippocentaurs and chimeras … to be imaged … ? The answer is easy … : the fiction of some beings which are not in nature … has been founded on the conjunction of two natures, which have a real separate being. So hippocentaurs were imaged by joining the natures of a man and horse together; … as Lucretius tells us… . The same reason may also be alleged for chimeras and the rest. And poets may be allowed the like liberty for describing things which really exist not, if they are founded on popular belief.”

Note 20 in page 39 Difesa, p. 585. The quotation is from Bulgarini, Maz-zoni's principal opponent in the Dante-controversy; see Michèle Barbi, Delia foriuna di Dante nel secolo XVI (Pisa, 1890).

Note 21 in page 39 Torquato Tasso, Prose, ed. Francesco Flora (Milan, 1935), pp. 332–333.