Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T08:55:33.911Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

From Allegory to Dialectic: Imagining Error in Spenser and Milton

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Gordon Teskey
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

To disengage moral error from the structure of narrative in Paradise Lost, Milton had, on the one hand, to renounce allegory and, on the other hand, to redefine the probabilistic conception of truth in contemporary theories of the heroic poem. While Spenser associates error with the meanderings of narrative, Milton polarizes error and truth so that no ambiguous wandering can occur in the intervening space—precisely the space where allegorical narrative must occur. Milton sought to teach by direct statement, Spenser to form character by engaging the reader in an interpretative game.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 101 , Issue 1 , January 1986 , pp. 9 - 23
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1986

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.)

References

Works Cited

Ariosto, Ludovico. Orlando furioso. Ed. Paparelli, Gioacchino. I Classici Rizzoli. 2 vols. Milano: Rizzoli, 1974.Google Scholar
Aristotle. Poetics. Ed. Lucas, D. W. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon, 1972.Google Scholar
Barker, Arthur E. Milton and the Puritan Dilemma. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1942.Google Scholar
Bateson, Gregory. “The Cybernetics of 'Self: A Theory of Alcoholism.” Psychiatry 34 (1971): 1–18. Rpt. in Steps to an Ecology of Mind. New York: Chandler, 1972. 304-37.Google ScholarPubMed
Bateson, Gregory. Mind and Nature. New York: Dutton, 1979.Google Scholar
Beltrami, Fabbrizio. “Alcune considerazioni intorno all' allegoria (1594).” Trattati di poetica e retorica del cinquecento. Ed. Weinberg, Bernard. Scrittori d'Italia 258. 4 vols. Bari: Laterza, 1970-74. 4: 319–32.Google Scholar
Bense, J. F. “‘Meliboeus old’ in Milton's Comus.” Neophilologus 1 (1916): 62–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bloom, Harold. A Map of Misreading. New York: Oxford UP, 1975.Google Scholar
Brown, Marshall. “‘Errours Endlesse Traine’: On Turning Points and the Dialectical Imagination.” PMLA 99 (1984): 9–25.Google Scholar
Bush, Douglas. English Literature in the Earlier Seventeenth Century. Oxford: Clarendon, 1945.Google Scholar
Bush, Douglas. John Milton: A Sketch of His Life and Writings. New York: Macmillan, 1964.Google Scholar
Bush, Douglas. Mythology and the Renaissance Tradition in Renaissance Poetry. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 1963.Google Scholar
Campbell, Jeremy. Grammatical Man: Information, Entropy, Language, and Life. New York: Simon, 1982.Google Scholar
Castelvetro, Lodovico. Poetica d'Aristotele vulgarizzata, et sposta. 1570. Poetiken des Cinquecento. München: Fink, 1967.Google Scholar
Cave, Terence. The Cornucopian Text: Problems of Writing in the French Renaissance. Oxford: Clarendon, 1979.Google Scholar
Coe, Richard M., and Wilden, Anthony. “Errore.” Enciclopedia. 16 vols. Milano: Einaudi, 1977-84. 5: 682–711.Google Scholar
Cullen, Patrick. Infernal Triad: The Flesh, the World, and the Devil in Spenser and Milton. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1974.Google Scholar
Cunliffe, Richard John. A Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect. London: Blackie, 1924.Google Scholar
Donne, John. The Sermons of John Donne. Ed. Potter, George R. and Simpson, Evelyn M. 10 vols. Berkeley: U of California P, 1953-62. Vol. 5.Google Scholar
Dryden, John. The Poems and Fables of John Dryden. Ed. Kinsley, James. London: Oxford UP, 1962.Google Scholar
Eco, Umberto. “Apertura, informazione, communicazione.” Opera aperta: Forma e indeterminazione nella poetiche contemporanee. 1962. Milano: Bompiani, 1976: 95–151.Google Scholar
Erbse, Hartmut. Scolia Graeca in Homeri Iliadem. 5 vols. & indexes. Berlin: Gruyter, 1969-83. Vol. 1.Google Scholar
Fish, Stanley Eugene. Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost. Berkeley: U of California P, 1967.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fletcher, Angus. The Prophetic Moment: An Essay on Spenser. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1971.Google Scholar
Fletcher, Harris Francis. The Intellectual Development of John Milton. 2 vols. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1956. Vol. 1.Google Scholar
Fletcher, Harris Francis. “Milton's Homer.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 38 (1939): 229–32.Google Scholar
Fornari, Simone. La spositione … sopra l' Orlando furioso. 2 vols. (bound together with independent pagination and signatures). Florence: 1549, 1550.Google Scholar
Frye, Northrop. Creation and Recreation. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1980.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giamatti, A. Bartlett. Play of Double Senses: Spenser's Faerie Queene. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice, 1975.Google Scholar
Greenlaw, Edwin. “A Better Teacher than Scotus or Aquinas.” Studies in Philology 14 (1917): 196–217.Google Scholar
Greenlaw, Edwin. “Spenser's Influence on Paradise Lost.” Studies in Philology 17 (1920): 320–59.Google Scholar
Grundy, Joan. The Spenserian Poets: A Study in Elizabethan and Jacobean Poetry. London: Arnold, 1969.Google Scholar
Guillory, John. Poetic Authority: Spenser, Milton, and Literary History. New York: Columbia UP, 1983.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanford, James Holly. A Milton Handbook. 4th ed. New York: Appleton, 1946.Google Scholar
Heidegger, Martin. “… Poetically Man Dwells. ...” Poetry, Language, Thought. Trans. Hofstadter, Albert. New York: Harper, 1971. 211–29.Google Scholar
Herendeen, W. H. Review of Murrin's Allegorical Epic. Renaissance and Reformation ns 6 (1982): 224–29.Google Scholar
Hieatt, A. Kent. Chaucer, Spenser, Milton: Mythopoeic Continuities and Transformations. Montreal: McGill-Queen's UP, 1975.Google Scholar
Hölderlin, Friedrich. Poems and Fragments. Ed. and trans. Michael Hamburger. 1966. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1980.Google Scholar
Homer. Homeri opera. Ed. Monroe, David and Allen, Thomas W. 3rd ed. 4 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1920. Vol. 1.Google Scholar
Homer. The Iliad of Homer. Trans. Lattimore, Richmond. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1951.Google Scholar
Horace. Opera. Ed. Klingner, F. Leipzig: Teubner, 1970.Google Scholar
Hunter, William B. “Spenser and Milton.” A Milton Encyclopedia. Ed. Hunter et al. 9 vols. Lewisburg: Buckneil UP, 1978-83. 8: 34–36.Google Scholar
Jones, P. F. “Milton and the Epic Subject from British History.” PMLA 42 (1927): 901–09.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kane, Sean. “The Paradoxes of Idealism: Book Two of The Faerie Queene.” John Donne Journal 2 (1983): 81–109.Google Scholar
Kane, Sean. “Spenserian Ecology.” ELH 50 (1983): 461–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirk, G. S. The Iliad: A Commentary. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985. Vol. 1.Google Scholar
Landino, Cristoforo. Cristoforo Landino's Allegorization of the Aeneid: Books 3 and 4 of the Camaldolese Disputations. Ed. and trans. Thomas H. Stahel. Diss. Johns Hopkins U, 1968.Google Scholar
Milton, John. Areopagitica. Ed. Sirluck, Ernest. Complete Prose Works of John Milton. 2: 480–570.Google Scholar
Milton, John. Complete Prose Works of John Milton. Ed. Don M. Wolfe et al. 8 vols. New Haven: Yale UP, 1953-80.Google Scholar
Milton, John. Poems. London, 1645 OS.Google Scholar
Milton, John. The Works of John Milton. Ed. Frank Allen Patterson et al. 18 vols. & indexes. New York: Columbia UP, 1931-40.Google Scholar
Murrin, Michael. “Landino's Virgil.” The Allegorical Epic: Essays in Its Rise and Decline. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1980. 27–50.Google Scholar
Murrin, Michael. “Tasso's Enchanted Wood.” The Allegorical Epic: Essays in Its Rise and Decline. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1980. 87–127.Google Scholar
Neuse, Richard. “Milton and Spenser: The Virgilian Triad Revisited.” ELH 45 (1978): 606–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parker, Patricia. Inescapable Romance: Studies in the Poetics of a Mode. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1979.Google Scholar
Patrides, C. A. Milton and the Christian Tradition. Oxford: Clarendon, 1966.Google Scholar
Patrides, C. A. ‘“A Palpable Hieroglyphick’: The Fable of Pope Joan.” Premises and Motifs in Renaissance Thought and Literature. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1982. 152–81.Google Scholar
Patterson, Annabel. “Paradise Regained: A Last Chance at True Romance.” Milton Studies 17 (1983): 190–210.Google Scholar
Petrarca, Francesco. Canzoniere. Ed. Dotti, Ugo. Milano: Feltrini, 1979.Google Scholar
Plato. Parmenides. Trans. Cornford, F. M. The Collected Dialogues of Plato. Ed. Hamilton, Edith and Cairns, Huntington. Bollingen 81. 2nd ed. 1963. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1973. 920–56.Google Scholar
Pope, Alexander, trans. The Iliad of Homer. Ed. Maynard Mack et al. Vols. 7 and 8 of The Twickenham Edition of the Poems of Alexander Pope. Ed. Butt, John. London: Methuen, 1967.Google Scholar
Quilligan, Maureen. Milton's Spenser: The Politics of Reading. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1983.Google Scholar
Radzinowicz, Mary Ann. Toward Samson Agonistes: The Growth of Milton's Mind. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1978.Google Scholar
Ricks, Christopher. Milton's Grand Style. Oxford: Clarendon, 1963.Google Scholar
Robortello, Francesco. Francisci Robortelli … in librum Aristotelis De arte poetica explicationes. Firenze, 1548.Google Scholar
Shannon, Claude E., and Weaver, Warren. The Mathematical Theory of Communication. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1949.Google Scholar
Italicus, Silius. Punica. Ed. and trans. J. D. Duff. 2 vols. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1934. Vol. 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sirluck, Ernest. “Milton Revises The Faerie Queene.” Modern Philology 48 (1958): 90–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spenser, Edmund. The Faerie Queene. Ed. Hamilton, A. C. Longman Annotated English Poets. London: Longman, 1977.Google Scholar
Spondanus, Iohannes. Homeri quae exstant omnia … cum … commentariis. 1583. Basel, 1606.Google Scholar
Steadman, John. Milton and the Renaissance Hero. Oxford: Clarendon, 1967.Google Scholar
Stein, Arnold. Answerable Style: Essays in Milton's Paradise Lost. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1953.Google Scholar
Suetonius. Suetonius. Ed. and trans. J. C. Rolfe. 2 vols. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1914. Vol. 2.Google Scholar
Tasso, Torquato. Discourses on the Heroic Poem. Trans. Cavalchini, Mariella and Samuel, Irene. Oxford: Clarendon, 1973.Google Scholar
Teskey, Gordon. “Milton's Choice of Subject in the Context of Renaissance Critical Theory.” ELH. Forthcoming.Google Scholar
Virgil. The Aeneid. Ed. Williams, R. D. 2 vols. London: Macmillan, 1972.Google Scholar
Weinberg, Bernard. A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1961.Google Scholar
Wells, William, ed. Spenser Allusions in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Part I: 1580–1625. Studies in Philology 68 (1971): 3-172.Google Scholar
Wiener, Norbert. The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society. 1954. New York: Avon, 1967.Google Scholar
Wilden, Anthony. System and Structure: Essays in Communication and Exchange. 2nd ed. London: Tavistock, 1980.Google Scholar
Williams, Kathleen. “Milton, Greatest Spenserian.” Milton and the Line of Vision. Ed. J. A. Wittreich, Jr. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1975. 25–55.Google Scholar
Wittreich, Joseph Anthony Jr. Visionary Poetics: Milton's Tradition and His Legacy. San Marino: Huntington, 1979.Google Scholar
Woodhouse, A. S. P. The Heavenly Muse: A Preface to Milton. Ed. MacCallum, Hugh. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1972.Google Scholar
Xenophon. Memorabilia and Oeconomicus. Ed. and trans. E. C. Marchaut. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1923.Google Scholar