WEBVTT 00:02.150 --> 00:05.340 Professor John Rogers: In the invocation to Book 00:05.340 --> 00:08.200 Nine of Paradise Lost, Milton describes -- and 00:08.201 --> 00:11.281 it's wonderful to see this representation of this process 00:11.282 --> 00:13.652 that, I think, we've been wondering about -- 00:13.648 --> 00:16.398 he describes the process by which the heavenly muse 00:16.398 --> 00:19.748 inspires, and he says inspires nightly, the composition of his 00:19.754 --> 00:21.964 epic. He explains that the subject 00:21.959 --> 00:24.729 for his heroic song -- and of course, we'll be getting to Book 00:24.725 --> 00:27.445 Nine later, but it's relevant for our 00:27.445 --> 00:32.025 discussion today -- Milton explains that the subject for 00:32.034 --> 00:36.354 his heroic song, the subject of the Fall of man, 00:36.348 --> 00:41.188 "pleas'd me long choosing, and beginning late…" 00:41.190 --> 00:42.950 -- pleased me long choosing and beginning late. 00:42.950 --> 00:46.210 We know very well Milton decided to write an epic poem at 00:46.212 --> 00:48.832 a very early age, but his decision to write an 00:48.834 --> 00:51.424 epic poem, some epic, long predated his 00:51.421 --> 00:54.901 sense of what exactly that epic was going to be about. 00:54.900 --> 00:59.760 He was long in choosing the subject of his heroic song and, 00:59.764 --> 01:04.634 as we know from all of -- and we've encountered a number of 01:04.629 --> 01:08.739 them -- all of those protestations of delay Milton 01:08.739 --> 01:10.919 began his epic late. 01:10.920 --> 01:14.640 We last left the poet in the 1640s. 01:14.640 --> 01:17.230 Areopagitica, you'll remember, 01:17.226 --> 01:18.546 was written in 1644. 01:18.549 --> 01:22.849 The story of Adam and Eve and of the fall of Satan may strike 01:22.848 --> 01:26.998 us -- having read or about to read Paradise Lost -- 01:27.003 --> 01:30.733 may strike us as a natural subject for Milton to have 01:30.729 --> 01:32.949 chosen for his epic poem. 01:32.950 --> 01:36.140 After all, this is an extremely pious Puritan. 01:36.140 --> 01:39.330 But as late as the 1640s, this was not at all the epic 01:39.331 --> 01:41.921 subject that Milton was intending to use. 01:41.920 --> 01:44.740 Milton -- and we know this -- Milton was a political 01:44.744 --> 01:47.244 revolutionary, and when he anticipated writing 01:47.237 --> 01:50.917 the great poem, he consistently imagined that 01:50.924 --> 01:54.834 it would be a poem on a nationalist theme. 01:54.830 --> 01:58.250 Milton's would be an epic demonstrating the origins and 01:58.253 --> 02:01.553 the heroic achievement of his own nation, England; 02:01.549 --> 02:04.139 or maybe he'd be thinking a little broadly of Britain, 02:04.142 --> 02:06.052 which is England, Scotland and Wales. 02:06.049 --> 02:09.929 In this respect it would resemble Spenser's Faerie 02:09.926 --> 02:13.576 Queene, or perhaps more importantly, 02:13.580 --> 02:16.760 Virgil's Aeneid -- other nationalist 02:16.760 --> 02:20.850 epics.Now Milton at the same time -- we're talking about the 02:20.849 --> 02:24.159 1640s -- had been contemplating writing a play. 02:24.159 --> 02:26.549 That was supposed to be a tragedy that, 02:26.547 --> 02:30.317 in some manuscript drafts that we still have today -- in some 02:30.317 --> 02:35.337 manuscript drafts, he titled this prospective 02:35.340 --> 02:43.040 tragedy Paradise Lost and in other drafts Adam 02:43.039 --> 02:47.169 Unparadised. Actually all of these early 02:47.172 --> 02:50.652 drafts -- these notes, these outlines for this tragedy 02:50.646 --> 02:54.186 that actually never seems to have gotten written -- are 02:54.186 --> 02:56.346 included in the Tyco packet. 02:56.349 --> 02:59.439 But by the time Milton begins writing his epic, 02:59.442 --> 03:02.672 he abandons his plan for a nationalistic poem, 03:02.669 --> 03:05.469 a nationalist poem, and decides instead to use the 03:05.469 --> 03:08.949 subject matter that he had been intending for that prospective 03:08.954 --> 03:11.104 tragedy, Paradise Lost. 03:11.099 --> 03:14.769 So the reasons for this really enormous shift in plans, 03:14.768 --> 03:17.688 and the enormous shift in subject matter, 03:17.689 --> 03:23.339 are worth exploring.Milton had devoted nineteen years to 03:23.341 --> 03:25.641 the world of politics. 03:25.639 --> 03:29.509 A lot has happened since the exuberant optimism of the 03:29.509 --> 03:34.109 political spirit that we see in a tract like Areopagitica. 03:34.110 --> 03:38.580 In 1649, the great Puritan Revolution 03:38.582 --> 03:42.162 reached an unspeakable climax. 03:42.160 --> 03:45.720 A minority government of revolutionary Puritans had 03:45.720 --> 03:48.640 effectively taken control of the state. 03:48.639 --> 03:52.699 The radical Puritan Parliament voted to execute the tyrant -- 03:52.702 --> 03:55.412 what they considered to be the tyrant, 03:55.410 --> 03:59.090 King Charles I -- and to establish its own government. 03:59.090 --> 04:02.560 Milton participated with extraordinary enthusiasm and 04:02.555 --> 04:06.415 considerable zeal in the establishment of England's new, 04:06.419 --> 04:09.829 non-monarchic government, initially a commonwealth and 04:09.834 --> 04:12.544 then what we can think of as a republic. 04:12.539 --> 04:15.839 He had been the foremost propagandist for the Puritan 04:15.836 --> 04:18.276 side. He had not only written really 04:18.284 --> 04:22.234 quite daringly on behalf of the execution of this particular 04:22.225 --> 04:24.025 king, but he wrote another pamphlet, 04:24.027 --> 04:26.727 Eikonoklastes (which is included in the Hughes edition), 04:26.730 --> 04:29.620 which is a shocking defense of just regicide in 04:29.622 --> 04:33.232 general -- not just in England, but as a kind of political 04:33.229 --> 04:36.479 principle.Milton probably around this time, 04:36.483 --> 04:40.163 around the time that he was writing and finishing the 04:40.162 --> 04:44.302 regicide treatises, began to lose his eyesight. 04:44.300 --> 04:50.600 This is in the earliest years of the commonwealth government. 04:50.600 --> 04:53.200 Nonetheless, even blind, Milton served the 04:53.204 --> 04:56.894 new regime as both a state licenser -- and I won't even get 04:56.889 --> 05:00.449 in to the irony of the fact that Milton seems to [laughs] 05:00.446 --> 05:04.386 actually become the licenser, the licenser of printed text 05:04.387 --> 05:07.017 that, of course, he had seven or eight years 05:07.024 --> 05:10.034 before so utterly abhorred in Areopagitica. 05:10.029 --> 05:13.099 He seems to have had some work as the state licenser, 05:13.102 --> 05:15.962 but also more importantly (and this was a much bigger 05:15.956 --> 05:18.586 commitment) as the nation's Latin secretary, 05:18.589 --> 05:22.719 which means that he would compose and translate all of 05:22.718 --> 05:27.468 England's correspondence with the governments on the continent 05:27.470 --> 05:29.340 into and from Latin. 05:29.339 --> 05:32.239 Up until this period, the early 1650s, 05:32.244 --> 05:36.334 Milton was a devoted contributor to the ideal Puritan 05:36.325 --> 05:40.805 notion of this government, and it was really the height of 05:40.811 --> 05:44.801 his political idealism.Fast forward a few more years. 05:44.800 --> 05:47.950 By the end of this decade, by the end of the 1650s, 05:47.945 --> 05:50.205 Milton could see, as could others, 05:50.209 --> 05:54.779 fairly clearly that what we can think of as the imminent 05:54.777 --> 05:58.097 collapse of the republican government. 05:58.100 --> 06:01.320 The majority of Englishmen were calling for the return of their 06:01.317 --> 06:02.767 nation's rightful monarch. 06:02.769 --> 06:08.269 It wasn't long before the revolution failed and the Stuart 06:08.272 --> 06:10.592 monarchy was restored. 06:10.589 --> 06:14.609 The son of the executed king, who had been in exile in 06:14.614 --> 06:18.264 France, was returned to the throne in England; 06:18.259 --> 06:21.289 and so at the Restoration -- as it's called, the restoration 06:21.285 --> 06:24.255 which took place in 1660 -- the Puritan revolutionaries, 06:24.259 --> 06:28.229 the revolutionaries like Milton who had devoted their labors to 06:28.230 --> 06:31.240 the success of this utopian ideal of the Puritan 06:31.241 --> 06:35.271 commonwealth, experienced a humiliating and 06:35.269 --> 06:38.919 bitter defeat. A lot of Milton's friends, 06:38.924 --> 06:43.444 a lot of Milton's comrades, were hanged and quartered. 06:43.440 --> 06:48.060 Milton himself was jailed and jailed for having written the 06:48.057 --> 06:50.607 regicide treatises, we have to assume, 06:50.605 --> 06:53.175 and it seems to have been solely the influence of some 06:53.184 --> 06:56.054 important friends that kept Milton from being held in prison 06:56.054 --> 06:59.574 indefinitely. It's entirely imaginable that 06:59.572 --> 07:05.042 Milton could have been executed for his writings on behalf of 07:05.038 --> 07:09.228 the killing of King Charles.So it's at this 07:09.230 --> 07:13.970 point -- this is after the revolution has failed that 07:13.967 --> 07:19.427 Milton begins to write his epic poem: it's at this point that 07:19.434 --> 07:25.484 Milton chooses to write an epic, not on a nationalist theme as 07:25.481 --> 07:28.671 Virgil had done or as Spenser had done. 07:28.670 --> 07:34.000 There was simply no nation worth writing about. 07:34.000 --> 07:37.380 All of Milton's labors in the cause of liberating England from 07:37.379 --> 07:40.699 the tyranny of monarchy had in some way -- could be construed 07:40.704 --> 07:42.204 as having been useless. 07:42.199 --> 07:45.029 All of Milton's expectations that England might actually be 07:45.025 --> 07:47.505 transformed, and they were glorious expectations, 07:47.509 --> 07:50.819 into something like a Puritan utopia or even a Puritan 07:50.819 --> 07:53.629 paradise -- all of that had been destroyed. 07:53.629 --> 07:58.089 It's at this point that Milton chose for the subject of his 07:58.092 --> 08:01.942 epic poem the subject of the tragedy that he'd been 08:01.939 --> 08:04.709 contemplating for so many years. 08:04.709 --> 08:11.649 The epic was going to treat the Fall, the Fall of Adam and Eve 08:11.646 --> 08:15.736 from their blissful state in Eden, 08:15.740 --> 08:19.750 but also the fall of the rebel angels after their failed 08:19.751 --> 08:21.751 revolution. There's a continual analogy 08:21.748 --> 08:24.038 running through Paradise Lost, and it's a very 08:24.039 --> 08:26.959 troubling one, that associates the paradise 08:26.955 --> 08:31.865 that man lost with the utopian government that England lost. 08:31.870 --> 08:34.790 Of course, perhaps even more troubling is the satanic 08:34.792 --> 08:35.862 parallel as well. 08:35.860 --> 08:41.570 You'll want to think about why Milton seems so aggressively to 08:41.567 --> 08:47.087 invite the association of the failure of the just revolution 08:47.088 --> 08:50.728 of the Puritans, and of course that's how he 08:50.734 --> 08:53.564 would see it, with the failure of the unjust 08:53.560 --> 08:56.910 revolution of the rebel angels under the guidance of 08:56.913 --> 09:00.533 Satan.Milton began writing his epic poem too late to 09:00.528 --> 09:03.418 celebrate a virtuous political realm. 09:03.419 --> 09:06.339 It's too late for this to be a political poem, 09:06.342 --> 09:10.242 but Paradise Lost is late for all sorts of reasons. 09:10.240 --> 09:13.520 It's late for some personal reasons as well. 09:13.519 --> 09:15.479 Milton had been, as you know, 09:15.482 --> 09:19.692 anticipating writing this poem since he was at least nineteen 09:19.688 --> 09:22.578 years old. He didn't even begin to fulfill 09:22.575 --> 09:26.195 what we can think of as his epic promise until he was nearly 09:26.202 --> 09:29.142 fifty years old, until he had actually lost the 09:29.143 --> 09:31.983 use of his eyes, until he could no longer read, 09:31.980 --> 09:38.790 and until he could no longer use a pen to write. 09:38.789 --> 09:43.639 Finally, Milton's poem is late by virtue of the simple fact 09:43.636 --> 09:47.226 that it's written in the form of an epic. 09:47.230 --> 09:48.820 An epic might have seemed [laughs] 09:48.820 --> 09:50.990 like a great idea when Milton was nineteen, 09:50.990 --> 09:54.170 but by the time Milton gets actually around to writing it, 09:54.169 --> 09:58.429 it's an entirely superannuated, utterly outdated form. 09:58.429 --> 10:01.009 There's, of course, the undeniable fact that the 10:01.014 --> 10:02.724 greatest epics, The Iliad, 10:02.720 --> 10:05.170 The Odyssey, and then The Aeneid, 10:05.168 --> 10:08.688 were all written in a heroic literary past that would 10:08.685 --> 10:11.255 have struck anybody as irrecoverable; 10:11.259 --> 10:14.129 but even the modern practice of epic writing, 10:14.126 --> 10:17.636 or romance epic writing, had basically entirely fizzled 10:17.643 --> 10:20.513 out by the end of the sixteenth century, 10:20.509 --> 10:23.269 when the Italians I'm thinking of, Tasso and Ariosto, 10:23.272 --> 10:26.062 were writing. There had been a half century 10:26.064 --> 10:30.334 that had passed since any great modern epic or romance epic had 10:30.327 --> 10:31.837 even been produced. 10:31.840 --> 10:33.740 There would have been a prevailing sense, 10:33.735 --> 10:36.005 and Milton has to have been sensitive to this, 10:36.009 --> 10:40.719 that it was simply too late to write an epic of any kind on any 10:40.720 --> 10:43.510 subject. Milton began his epic poem 10:43.508 --> 10:48.428 late.It's in relation to all of these forms of lateness that 10:48.425 --> 10:52.085 we can best understand the opening invocation of 10:52.093 --> 10:53.813 Paradise Lost. 10:53.809 --> 10:57.789 So look at the first lines of the poem. 10:57.789 --> 11:02.699 This is page 211 in the Hughes. 11:02.700 --> 11:07.440 Harold Bloom has written, and I think he's absolutely 11:07.436 --> 11:11.836 right, that Milton begins Paradise Lost with a 11:11.835 --> 11:15.045 powerful defense against lateness. 11:15.049 --> 11:17.719 You can think of it as this reaction to the problem of 11:17.724 --> 11:20.454 lateness that accounts for one of the invocation's most 11:20.448 --> 11:23.398 distinctive features, and that's the repetition of 11:23.396 --> 11:24.476 the word "first." 11:24.480 --> 11:27.610 You actually have the word "first" appearing six times in 11:27.607 --> 11:30.677 the first thirty-three lines of Paradise Lost. 11:30.679 --> 11:33.249 We'll do a little catalog of them: "Of Man's First 11:33.253 --> 11:35.773 Disobedience and the Fruit" -- that was line one, 11:35.774 --> 11:38.264 of course. Line eight: "That Shepherd, 11:38.264 --> 11:40.674 who first taught the chosen Seed..." 11:40.669 --> 11:42.589 Line nineteen: "Thou from the first / wast 11:42.587 --> 11:44.987 present…" Go down to line twenty-seven: 11:44.989 --> 11:47.839 "Say first, for Heav'n hides nothing from thy view." 11:47.840 --> 11:49.700 Line twenty-eight: "say first what cause." 11:49.700 --> 11:53.380 And line thirty-three: "Who first seduc'd them to that 11:53.378 --> 11:56.638 foul revolt?" Milton is alerting us to the 11:56.640 --> 12:01.160 significance of the word "first" in the very first line, 12:01.159 --> 12:04.979 in this wonderful act of violating the laws of iambic 12:04.978 --> 12:09.678 pentameter.Now the rhythm of a true line of iambic pentameter 12:09.677 --> 12:12.507 -- and there are, of course, hundreds, 12:12.514 --> 12:16.344 maybe thousands of such lines in this poem -- a true line of 12:16.335 --> 12:18.985 iambic pentameter would run like this. 12:18.990 --> 12:21.090 You know this: "da-DA-da-DA-da- 12:21.087 --> 12:25.417 DA-da-DA-da-DA," an unaccented syllable followed by an accented 12:25.423 --> 12:29.483 syllable, and that little pattern repeated five times. 12:29.480 --> 12:33.880 With this iambic template in mind, with this little paradigm 12:33.882 --> 12:37.912 in our head, we may feel metrically constrained to read 12:37.911 --> 12:42.391 the first line of this poem like this: "Of Man's First 12:42.387 --> 12:48.467 Disobedience, and the Fruit" -- 12:48.466 --> 12:51.146 "da-DA-da-DA-da-DA..." 12:51.150 --> 12:53.780 It sounds stupid. 12:53.780 --> 12:54.790 It should sound stupid. 12:54.789 --> 12:59.299 It's impossible to get away with such an awkward reading, 12:59.295 --> 13:04.355 but that's the reading that the metrical form is pushing us into 13:04.363 --> 13:07.903 producing. The problem with my awkward, 13:07.898 --> 13:13.058 metrically proper reading of that first line is that the word 13:13.057 --> 13:16.237 "first" insists on being accented, 13:16.240 --> 13:20.320 and it screws up the template: "Of man's first 13:20.324 --> 13:22.764 disobedience, and the fruit," 13:22.759 --> 13:26.539 and so Milton is rebelling against an implicit law of 13:26.543 --> 13:29.893 poetic meter in the very first line of what, 13:29.889 --> 13:34.599 of course, we know will be this extraordinarily self-conscious 13:34.599 --> 13:37.339 poem. You could think of this as the 13:37.336 --> 13:41.876 poem's first -- by no means its last -- its first act of poetic 13:41.876 --> 13:46.336 disobedience.Now the word "first" begins to take on a much 13:46.343 --> 13:51.033 bigger range of significances than we might at first think. 13:51.029 --> 13:53.719 When Milton instructs his muse, "Say first, for Heav'n hides 13:53.720 --> 13:56.440 nothing from thy view," there's something more here 13:56.435 --> 13:59.815 than the primary sense of the word, which is just "first in 13:59.821 --> 14:01.531 sequence." Milton, of course, 14:01.531 --> 14:03.651 is instructing the muse to explain first, 14:03.646 --> 14:06.286 before she gets around to explaining anything else, 14:06.290 --> 14:08.300 what caused Adam and Eve to fall. 14:08.299 --> 14:11.809 That's just the simple sequential sense of "first," the 14:11.807 --> 14:15.117 first that comes before second, third and fourth; 14:15.120 --> 14:18.250 but there's something more radical here than the ordinal or 14:18.250 --> 14:19.870 sequential sense of "first." 14:19.870 --> 14:24.190 "First" can also mean "earliest": Milton's describing 14:24.194 --> 14:27.604 his muse now, at the present moment of the 14:27.604 --> 14:31.744 writing of the poem, to be the first one perhaps 14:31.743 --> 14:36.593 ever to explain the cause of the Fall, to be the first to tell 14:36.585 --> 14:39.755 the story of the loss of paradise or, 14:39.759 --> 14:46.469 I don't know -- to be the first poet ever to write an epic poem. 14:46.470 --> 14:50.080 Milton's constructing -- it's a remarkable and impossible 14:50.084 --> 14:52.674 strategy here, and it's one we can call a 14:52.666 --> 14:56.086 strategy of retrospective anticipation and it's a type 14:56.087 --> 14:58.977 of… Of course, this retrospective 14:58.976 --> 15:01.276 anticipation can only be a fiction. 15:01.279 --> 15:04.229 One can never come before something that, 15:04.231 --> 15:08.221 of course, has already happened, but this fiction of an 15:08.215 --> 15:12.265 impossible firstness is something that Milton is working 15:12.273 --> 15:16.113 very hard to accomplish here.We know this. 15:16.110 --> 15:18.990 Milton has already indulged this fantasy of coming before 15:18.989 --> 15:20.839 something that's already happened. 15:20.840 --> 15:25.880 We recognize this desire to anticipate an already existing 15:25.877 --> 15:27.907 narrative, from what? 15:27.909 --> 15:30.889 From Milton's first major poem, the Nativity Ode. 15:30.889 --> 15:33.949 Milton directed the heavenly muse in that poem, 15:33.948 --> 15:36.818 you'll remember, to prevent -- to come before -- 15:36.823 --> 15:40.433 the three wise men who were hasting to the manger with their 15:40.432 --> 15:43.982 gold and their frankincense and their myrrh: "O run, 15:43.980 --> 15:45.590 prevent them with thy humble ode… 15:45.590 --> 15:49.940 / have thou the honour first, thy Lord to greet." 15:49.940 --> 15:54.910 I suggest that we can hear echoes of that same youthful 15:54.913 --> 15:59.703 competitiveness in Milton's first major poem in these 15:59.702 --> 16:03.392 opening lines, in the beginning of the great 16:03.389 --> 16:05.279 epic of Milton's maturity. 16:05.279 --> 16:10.749 Milton wants to write an epic that in some ways comes before, 16:10.750 --> 16:14.400 or prevents, the great epics of Homer and 16:14.397 --> 16:18.347 Virgil. It's safe to say that this is 16:18.354 --> 16:22.434 no easy feat.As presumptuous [laughs] 16:22.430 --> 16:26.290 as that desire is, to come before Homer or to come 16:26.286 --> 16:28.496 before Virgil, it's by no means the final 16:28.501 --> 16:31.141 sense, I think, of Milton's ambitious 16:31.142 --> 16:32.502 drive to be first. 16:32.500 --> 16:36.110 Milton invokes the same heavenly muse here who inspired 16:36.111 --> 16:37.651 Moses, that shepherd. 16:37.649 --> 16:40.879 Look at line eight: Moses, "that shepherd, 16:40.882 --> 16:43.722 who first taught the chosen Seed." 16:43.720 --> 16:46.190 It's almost as if -- could this be? 16:46.190 --> 16:50.100 It's almost as if Milton wants to narrate the events of the 16:50.101 --> 16:53.951 Creation and the Fall with the same kind of firstness that 16:53.945 --> 16:55.415 Moses did. Milton would, 16:55.422 --> 16:57.882 of course, have assumed that it was Moses who had written the 16:57.878 --> 17:00.828 first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, 17:00.834 --> 17:05.754 and to prevent, or come, before Moses is an act 17:05.754 --> 17:11.854 of prevention or anticipation far more dangerous than mere 17:11.851 --> 17:15.061 literary competitiveness. 17:15.060 --> 17:16.940 What's Milton doing here? 17:16.940 --> 17:21.800 We could see him as actually vying with scripture. 17:21.799 --> 17:26.629 Implicit in this invocation is a truly remarkable claim that 17:26.630 --> 17:31.630 this poem is the product of the same divine authority that had 17:31.625 --> 17:36.205 informed and inspired the writing of the Holy Bible. 17:36.210 --> 17:40.350 Sing Heav'nly Muse, that on the secret top Of 17:40.348 --> 17:43.408 Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire That 17:43.413 --> 17:46.283 Shepherd, who first taught the chosen 17:46.279 --> 17:50.429 Seed, In the Beginning how the Heav'ns and Earth Rose 17:50.432 --> 17:53.202 out of Chaos: Or if Sion Hill Delight 17:53.201 --> 17:55.281 thee more, and Siloa's Brook that 17:55.277 --> 17:57.067 flow'd Fast by the Oracle of God; 17:57.069 --> 18:02.169 I thence Invoke thy aid to my advent'rous Song... 18:02.170 --> 18:08.380 Now Milton doesn't want simply to be an epic poet like Homer 18:08.381 --> 18:11.561 and Virgil. That's -- no sweat with that 18:11.557 --> 18:13.797 one! Milton wants to be a divine 18:13.802 --> 18:17.502 prophet like one of the great Hebrew poets of the Old 18:17.504 --> 18:20.224 Testament. This is why he's continually 18:20.219 --> 18:23.929 placing the imaginative origin of the poem back to the very 18:23.927 --> 18:26.577 dawn of time, perhaps even back before -- if 18:26.575 --> 18:29.875 you can imagine such a time -- before the very dawn of time. 18:29.880 --> 18:33.310 Milton wants to create the illusion that he's predicting, 18:33.307 --> 18:36.287 or that he's prophesying, the actions recounted in the 18:36.291 --> 18:38.771 poem, as if Milton were prophesying what of course we 18:38.765 --> 18:40.045 know to be already past. 18:40.049 --> 18:42.809 This is the strategy of retrospective 18:42.811 --> 18:47.491 anticipation.Now Milton can make this implicit claim for a 18:47.491 --> 18:51.941 prophecy because he's being inspired by none other than the 18:51.941 --> 18:56.081 divine spirit that had inspired Moses to sing of divine 18:56.084 --> 19:00.614 creation: "how the Heav'ns and Earth / rose out of Chaos" -- 19:00.610 --> 19:04.140 this is already an outrageous claim, 19:04.140 --> 19:07.400 but Milton dares to go even further. 19:07.400 --> 19:11.490 Not only is this the same muse who had inspired Moses to write 19:11.491 --> 19:14.351 about the Creation, this heavenly spirit was 19:14.354 --> 19:17.024 actually present at the moment of creation. 19:17.020 --> 19:20.780 Look at line seventeen: And chiefly Thou O 19:20.781 --> 19:24.851 Spirit, that dost prefer Before all Temples th' upright 19:24.846 --> 19:28.556 heart and pure, Instruct me, for Thou know'st; 19:28.559 --> 19:32.129 Thou from the first Wast present, and with mighty wings 19:32.132 --> 19:35.772 outspread Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss 19:35.766 --> 19:38.226 And mad'st it pregnant… 19:38.230 --> 19:42.390 Of all of the appearances of the word "first" in these 19:42.392 --> 19:45.932 opening lines, this is the "first" that has to 19:45.926 --> 19:47.886 bear the most weight. 19:47.890 --> 19:53.660 The spirit to whom Milton is praying was the actual vehicle 19:53.660 --> 19:57.740 through which God created the universe. 19:57.740 --> 20:01.980 This is the spirit through whom God fashioned the world out of 20:01.983 --> 20:04.493 chaos. This is the spirit that Moses 20:04.493 --> 20:08.133 says, in the first Book of Genesis, that moved upon the 20:08.131 --> 20:11.231 face of the waters at the time of creation. 20:11.230 --> 20:14.140 Milton goes beyond the image of this creation, 20:14.135 --> 20:17.485 this creative power provided for us by the King James 20:17.493 --> 20:21.373 translation of the Bible or by any English translation of the 20:21.367 --> 20:23.237 Bible in Milton's time. 20:23.240 --> 20:25.300 He looks back even further. 20:25.299 --> 20:29.699 Milton goes back to the Latin version of the Bible which 20:29.704 --> 20:33.314 translates the Hebrew word for moved as 20:33.308 --> 20:34.988 incubabat. 20:34.990 --> 20:37.950 That's Jerome's translation. 20:37.950 --> 20:42.520 Incubate is the strange Latin word, and it's a verb -- 20:42.515 --> 20:46.695 of course, as we know -- it's a verb typically used with 20:46.699 --> 20:50.579 relation not to spirits but to gestating birds, 20:50.579 --> 20:52.799 and it literally means "to brood." 20:52.799 --> 20:56.369 To incubate means to brood or to sit on one's eggs 20:56.369 --> 20:57.579 until they hatch. 20:57.579 --> 21:02.569 And so Milton's Holy Spirit, the creative force behind the 21:02.567 --> 21:06.417 entire universe, actually sat brooding on the 21:06.417 --> 21:09.887 vast abyss, sitting on the waters of chaos 21:09.887 --> 21:14.197 just as a mother dove might sit on her eggs.Think of what 21:14.202 --> 21:16.362 Milton's asking us of here. 21:16.360 --> 21:17.460 He's asking a lot. 21:17.460 --> 21:22.150 He's asking us to imagine God, or perhaps this is God's 21:22.145 --> 21:26.135 creative spirit, as some sort of feminine being 21:26.137 --> 21:31.337 laying the universal egg and brooding over it until it bursts 21:31.343 --> 21:33.603 forth with new life. 21:33.600 --> 21:35.320 This is a risk. Milton's treading an 21:35.316 --> 21:38.496 extraordinarily fine line between the tremendous beauty of 21:38.498 --> 21:40.888 this image, on the one hand, 21:40.892 --> 21:46.942 and its potential impiety or just grotesquery on the other. 21:46.940 --> 21:50.850 No sooner has Milton conjured this already unbelievable image 21:50.847 --> 21:54.557 of a kind of maternal creation than he reverses all of the 21:54.558 --> 21:57.878 gendered categories that he's just established. 21:57.880 --> 22:01.870 He adds to this image that is perfectly, sufficiently filled 22:01.871 --> 22:05.461 with grotesquery as it is -- he adds this next phrase: 22:05.457 --> 22:07.417 "and mad'st it pregnant." 22:07.420 --> 22:15.020 22:15.019 --> 22:21.359 How do we even begin to appreciate this amazing imagery 22:21.358 --> 22:24.238 here? In portraying the deity, 22:24.242 --> 22:28.112 I would think, if I were to write an epic poem 22:28.110 --> 22:33.100 -- I would feel that I would be expected to stay within the 22:33.096 --> 22:37.476 fairly narrow parameters of religious decorum. 22:37.480 --> 22:39.800 Milton had no precedent for this. 22:39.799 --> 22:43.809 There's no precedent for this depiction of a god or a holy 22:43.807 --> 22:46.827 spirit as a kind of hermaphroditic being. 22:46.829 --> 22:50.589 I think it's safe to say that we're intended to be shocked, 22:50.593 --> 22:53.843 maybe even repulsed, by this remarkable description 22:53.837 --> 22:56.817 of the deity; and so I'm hoping you feel 22:56.821 --> 23:01.381 something of a shock of these lines, "and mad'st it pregnant." 23:01.380 --> 23:05.160 Milton is taking a huge aesthetic risk here.Whatever 23:05.164 --> 23:07.984 you're reading, it's always worth thinking 23:07.984 --> 23:11.774 about and considering what the motives might be for such 23:11.769 --> 23:14.589 extraordinary literary risk taking. 23:14.589 --> 23:20.329 This image of the curious process by which the heavenly 23:20.325 --> 23:27.225 spirit creates the universe is absolutely central to this poem, 23:27.230 --> 23:30.110 and it's central to the poem for two reasons. 23:30.109 --> 23:34.099 It's central to Milton's theological vision that will 23:34.096 --> 23:37.466 soon establish itself throughout the poem, 23:37.470 --> 23:40.930 and it's also, I think, central to his poetic 23:40.930 --> 23:45.020 vision, his vision of what a poem is or should be. 23:45.019 --> 23:49.829 This shocking image, this impossible-to-imagine 23:49.830 --> 23:53.490 image of a brooding impregnation, 23:53.490 --> 23:58.570 establishes the foundation for two of this poem's most daring 23:58.568 --> 24:01.478 elements. The first is the radical 24:01.481 --> 24:06.271 theology, and the second is this poem's equally radical and 24:06.268 --> 24:11.058 equally daring original verse form.Let's take the first 24:11.056 --> 24:16.376 thing first, the radical theology. 24:16.380 --> 24:19.750 I'm only able to talk about a small component of Milton's 24:19.753 --> 24:21.323 theological daring here. 24:21.319 --> 24:23.909 It's with this image of a brooding impregnation that 24:23.905 --> 24:27.095 Milton announces the presence in his poem of his most potent, 24:27.099 --> 24:30.699 what I think is the most interesting, theological 24:30.700 --> 24:33.700 innovation that he comes up with here. 24:33.700 --> 24:37.430 It seems to be the case that Milton rather late in his life 24:37.433 --> 24:38.853 has become a monist. 24:38.849 --> 24:43.919 He embraces the heterodox idea of monism, sometimes called 24:43.923 --> 24:49.633 animist materialism or vitalism, which is essentially a denial 24:49.633 --> 24:54.263 of any distinction between the body and the soul. 24:54.259 --> 24:57.779 The principle of monism had just introduced itself in 24:57.780 --> 25:01.490 England around the mid-1640s, around, it's been argued, 25:01.487 --> 25:04.827 the time that Milton's writing Areopagitica, 25:04.829 --> 25:08.599 and it met with all sorts of opposition. 25:08.599 --> 25:11.939 Orthodox scientists, orthodox Christians -- everyone 25:11.938 --> 25:15.078 agreed in the seventeenth century that matter, 25:15.079 --> 25:19.369 or substance or body, was entirely separate from and 25:19.371 --> 25:23.921 distinct from the immaterial, the incorporeal, 25:23.917 --> 25:27.427 stuff called spirit or soul. 25:27.430 --> 25:29.940 So orthodoxy is definitively dualist. 25:29.940 --> 25:35.850 There are two types of stuff [laughs]: immaterial stuff and 25:35.848 --> 25:38.798 matter or body; but Milton insisted that 25:38.801 --> 25:41.091 there's no such thing as an immaterial spirit, 25:41.092 --> 25:43.232 that that was a contradiction in terms. 25:43.230 --> 25:48.480 Everything that we call soul or spirit, even God himself, 25:48.476 --> 25:51.096 for John Milton is bodily. 25:51.099 --> 25:55.219 Spirit is merely a kind of bodily form of energy, 25:55.217 --> 26:00.017 and God at the beginning of time infused this energy into 26:00.020 --> 26:04.820 the entirety of the material world at the Creation.So 26:04.824 --> 26:08.514 physical life, physical matter, 26:08.511 --> 26:14.551 for the mature Milton is never lifeless or dead. 26:14.549 --> 26:16.999 All matter contains within it something like a "potency of 26:16.996 --> 26:18.116 life"; that's Milton's phrase. 26:18.119 --> 26:21.829 It has a capacity for action, actually a capacity for motion, 26:21.825 --> 26:25.035 and, just as books can take on a life of their own in 26:25.037 --> 26:31.057 Areopagitica, so all matter for later Milton. 26:31.059 --> 26:34.659 Even what we think in our vulgar ways to be inanimate 26:34.662 --> 26:38.752 objects -- even they seem to have within them something like 26:38.750 --> 26:41.390 a potency, a potency of life or an 26:41.385 --> 26:43.335 infusion of divine spirit. 26:43.339 --> 26:48.819 Of course, the human body is the supreme example of the 26:48.824 --> 26:53.094 spiritually infused corporeal substance. 26:53.090 --> 26:56.350 It's infused with divine spirit. 26:56.349 --> 26:58.989 And this is a huge problem in the seventeenth century. 26:58.990 --> 27:02.900 Milton's contemporaries were endlessly conjecturing where it 27:02.902 --> 27:06.022 is exactly in the body that the soul resides. 27:06.019 --> 27:08.789 Some of you may know that Descartes, the great French 27:08.785 --> 27:11.705 philosopher and Milton's slightly older contemporary, 27:11.710 --> 27:17.380 had decided that the soul resided in the pineal gland of 27:17.380 --> 27:23.260 the body, the soul managed [laughs]to govern the body from 27:23.256 --> 27:27.086 this tiny, little place in the -- where is 27:27.085 --> 27:28.465 the pineal gland? 27:28.470 --> 27:31.060 I think it's in your brain, the back of your head. 27:31.060 --> 27:36.720 Thank you. Keep that in mind.The soul 27:36.722 --> 27:41.142 for Milton though isn't distinct from body. 27:41.140 --> 27:44.610 It is the body. The soul infused its power 27:44.614 --> 27:46.974 throughout the entirety of the bodily frame, 27:46.970 --> 27:49.930 and so body and soul in Milton's incredibly moving, 27:49.930 --> 27:54.000 and I think really beautiful, vision almost becomes 27:54.001 --> 27:55.631 indistinguishable. 27:55.630 --> 27:58.160 All of this monistic philosophy, I think, 27:58.158 --> 28:01.758 is implicit in the image of divinity's impregnation of the 28:01.761 --> 28:04.251 vast abyss. Milton's God doesn't, 28:04.252 --> 28:08.222 as we learn from Genesis, doesn't fashion the matter of 28:08.217 --> 28:09.977 chaos with his hands. 28:09.980 --> 28:13.600 He impregnates it with spirit, and he gives it a potency of 28:13.602 --> 28:16.222 life. As you'll see in Book Seven, 28:16.219 --> 28:20.029 the book of the Creation, he gives it a liberty to 28:20.033 --> 28:24.313 organize itself into the order of the created world -- a 28:24.314 --> 28:26.654 freedom to create itself. 28:26.650 --> 28:30.800 That's one consequence of Milton's image of a brooding 28:30.796 --> 28:35.096 impregnation.There's a second type of potency that's 28:35.100 --> 28:38.230 also established in with this image, 28:38.230 --> 28:42.580 and that's the potency of the kind of verse that Milton is 28:42.583 --> 28:45.183 writing in Paradise Lost. 28:45.180 --> 28:48.600 It's been argued, and I think there's something 28:48.598 --> 28:52.758 to this, that Milton's monism is closely connected to his 28:52.760 --> 28:54.990 implicit theory of poetry. 28:54.990 --> 29:00.300 There's no question that the shock experienced by the first 29:00.296 --> 29:05.876 readers of Paradise Lost had next to nothing to do with 29:05.876 --> 29:10.706 the content of this poem, which might strike us as 29:10.706 --> 29:12.516 shocking in itself. 29:12.519 --> 29:16.939 We would think that Milton's contemporaries might be aghast 29:16.940 --> 29:21.590 that such a sympathetic portrait of Satan could be used at the 29:21.588 --> 29:23.568 beginning of the poem. 29:23.569 --> 29:27.849 No, the most immediately shocking aspect of the poem was 29:27.852 --> 29:32.372 its style, and we have to look at the actual poetic form by 29:32.367 --> 29:36.727 which this poem is constructed because the poetic form is 29:36.727 --> 29:39.917 absolutely integral to its meaning. 29:39.920 --> 29:42.960 If you're not taking notes in this lecture, 29:42.959 --> 29:46.359 you have to write down at least one sentence. 29:46.359 --> 29:50.299 You must write this down because this will be the most 29:50.300 --> 29:54.310 important thing I say all morning: Milton's Paradise 29:54.314 --> 29:58.634 Lost is the first narrative poem in English that didn't 29:58.626 --> 30:02.936 rhyme.Milton wrote his epic in lines of unrhymed iambic 30:02.938 --> 30:07.178 pentameter or what we call, and what Milton would have 30:07.177 --> 30:08.497 called, blank verse. 30:08.500 --> 30:13.140 Up to this point in literary history, only verse written for 30:13.138 --> 30:17.458 the theater had been written in unrhymed lines of iambic 30:17.462 --> 30:19.902 pentameter, in blank verse. 30:19.900 --> 30:22.800 This is the verse form, you'll recognize it, 30:22.797 --> 30:26.837 in so many of the long speeches of characters in the plays of 30:26.840 --> 30:28.930 Marlowe and of Shakespeare. 30:28.930 --> 30:31.730 Those are plays though, and all English narrative 30:31.726 --> 30:34.986 poems, including all of Shakespeare's narrative poems, 30:34.990 --> 30:39.840 they had all been written in rhyme, either long verse 30:39.841 --> 30:44.791 paragraphs of rhymed heroic couplets or in intricately 30:44.787 --> 30:49.067 rhymed stanzas. For most readers in Milton's 30:49.069 --> 30:53.459 time, rhyme was actually constitutive of poetry, 30:53.460 --> 30:57.090 and Milton's lines of unrhymed verse here may well have not 30:57.090 --> 30:58.530 seemed poetry at all. 30:58.529 --> 31:02.979 It was shocking.There seems to have been something of a kind 31:02.978 --> 31:06.648 of outcry about the style of Paradise Lost. 31:06.650 --> 31:10.090 Look at page 210 in the Hughes. It's in response 31:10.088 --> 31:13.848 to what seems to have been an aesthetic reaction to the poem 31:13.846 --> 31:17.536 that the printer of Paradise Lost asked Milton, 31:17.539 --> 31:21.729 went back to Milton and asked him to append a note to the 31:21.729 --> 31:26.139 book's second printing -- to append a note that explains why 31:26.144 --> 31:27.944 the poem rhymes not. 31:27.940 --> 31:30.230 People can't deal with this poem until they [laughs]can get 31:30.231 --> 31:32.011 a handle on the fact that it doesn't rhyme. 31:32.009 --> 31:36.169 So Milton writes this and adds it, appends it, 31:36.169 --> 31:39.959 to all subsequent editions of the poem. 31:39.960 --> 31:43.500 This is what Milton tells us: The measure is English 31:43.498 --> 31:47.078 Heroic Verse without Rime, as that of Homer in Greek, 31:47.079 --> 31:51.169 and of Virgil in Latin; Rime being no necessary Adjunct 31:51.171 --> 31:55.181 or true Ornament of Poem or good Verse, in longer Works 31:55.180 --> 31:58.830 especially, but the Invention [and this is 31:58.825 --> 32:02.465 so familiarly Miltonic] of a barbarous Age, 32:02.472 --> 32:06.382 to set off wretched matter and lame Meter; 32:06.380 --> 32:10.620 grac't indeed since by the use of some famous modern Poets, 32:10.624 --> 32:14.214 [okay, Spenser might have done it kind of well, 32:14.210 --> 32:16.260 the whole rhyme-thing, but nonetheless, 32:16.261 --> 32:18.801 the modern poets are] carried away by Custom, 32:18.799 --> 32:22.309 but much to their own vexation, hindrance, and constraint to 32:22.314 --> 32:26.084 express many things otherwise, and for the most part worse 32:26.076 --> 32:29.236 than they else would have exprest them. 32:29.240 --> 32:32.490 Milton brings to his critique of rhyme that same -- and this 32:32.488 --> 32:35.408 is familiar -- the same political rhetoric that he had 32:35.406 --> 32:38.156 brought to his critique of monarchy in the regicide 32:38.159 --> 32:41.189 treatises. You can also hear Satan's 32:41.189 --> 32:45.919 critique of the tyranny of heaven in this account of the 32:45.918 --> 32:48.578 rhyme as well. Like kingship, 32:48.576 --> 32:50.196 rhyme is a custom. 32:50.200 --> 32:53.410 It's an invention of a barbarous age which a blind and 32:53.410 --> 32:56.800 ignorant population will accept only to its own vexation, 32:56.802 --> 32:58.622 hindrance, and constraint. 32:58.619 --> 33:02.339 It's always Milton's duty -- this is the reason that he was 33:02.344 --> 33:05.364 put on this earth: to liberate a people from any 33:05.363 --> 33:07.293 such constraining customs. 33:07.289 --> 33:10.839 It's the rhetoric of liberation that -- this is the rhetoric 33:10.839 --> 33:14.569 that permeates all of Milton's political prose.While Milton 33:14.569 --> 33:18.059 decided against writing an explicitly political nationalist 33:18.058 --> 33:20.718 poem, he did see himself as writing a 33:20.716 --> 33:24.126 poem that performed some kind of political function. 33:24.130 --> 33:27.270 It performed its revolutionary function in a much more subtle, 33:27.273 --> 33:29.853 though, and a much more insinuating kind of way. 33:29.849 --> 33:31.979 And so at the end of this note on the verse Milton claims that 33:31.981 --> 33:33.911 Paradise Lost: … 33:33.910 --> 33:38.040 is to be esteem'd an example set, the first in English 33:38.040 --> 33:42.680 [another important first], of ancient liberty recover'd to 33:42.677 --> 33:46.737 Heroic Poem from the troublesome and modern bondage of 33:46.742 --> 33:51.742 Riming. It's a wonderful metaphor. 33:51.740 --> 33:55.390 It's as if Milton is thinking of the poem as if it were a 33:55.386 --> 33:59.486 human body, and the rhyme words at the end of the typical heroic 33:59.489 --> 34:02.809 couplet -- the two lines that rhyme at the end, 34:02.809 --> 34:07.469 and then another two lines with a different rhyme at the end of 34:07.471 --> 34:11.681 those two lines -- these lined rhymes of the poems by his 34:11.681 --> 34:15.251 contemporaries, his competitors: 34:15.252 --> 34:20.342 the rhyme words function as shackles. 34:20.340 --> 34:21.620 I think that's the image here. 34:21.619 --> 34:25.529 They're manacles that confine the otherwise vulnerable and 34:25.532 --> 34:28.212 tender flesh of the body of the poem. 34:28.210 --> 34:32.830 Rhymes are barbarous forms of constraint that impinge upon the 34:32.833 --> 34:35.793 true freedom of the body of the poem. 34:35.789 --> 34:39.049 Milton explains here in the middle of the note that's why 34:39.048 --> 34:41.258 other cultures have rejected rhyme: 34:41.260 --> 34:43.370 … as a thing of itself, 34:43.374 --> 34:46.524 to all judicious ears, trivial and of no true musical 34:46.515 --> 34:48.815 delight; which consists only [true 34:48.823 --> 34:51.673 musical delight consists only] in apt Numbers, 34:51.673 --> 34:55.303 fit quantity of Syllables, and the sense variously drawn 34:55.303 --> 34:59.023 out from one Verse into another, not in the jingling sound of 34:59.015 --> 35:02.195 like endings... So Milton refuses to force his 35:02.197 --> 35:05.647 poem to make sense through the barbarous mechanics of rhyme, 35:05.650 --> 35:09.820 which for Milton reduces all of the spirit, all of the life of a 35:09.817 --> 35:13.577 poem or of a line, simply to that jingling sound 35:13.580 --> 35:15.600 at the end of the line. 35:15.599 --> 35:19.939 And so in Milton's verse here, sense or meaning is variously 35:19.944 --> 35:22.894 drawn out from one verse into another. 35:22.889 --> 35:26.899 Sense, the very spirit of meaning, is infused throughout 35:26.904 --> 35:31.284 an entire line rather than being singled out and separated or 35:31.284 --> 35:35.444 segregated to the end of the line in the form of the rhyme 35:35.444 --> 35:39.684 word.Sense in Milton's poetry functions a lot like soul 35:39.678 --> 35:42.888 or spirit does in Milton's theology, 35:42.889 --> 35:46.169 and so Milton's note on the verse clues us into this 35:46.169 --> 35:50.349 intimate connection between his radical poetics of blank verse, 35:50.349 --> 35:53.869 on the one hand, and his radical theology of 35:53.869 --> 35:55.669 monism on the other. 35:55.670 --> 35:59.130 You can see from the handout that I've given you -- I hope 35:59.128 --> 36:02.708 you can see from the handout that I've given you a quotation 36:02.707 --> 36:05.677 here from Milton's Christian Doctrine, 36:05.679 --> 36:10.899 yes, in which Milton describes the process whereby God actually 36:10.898 --> 36:15.608 impregnates the human body with soul: "Nor did God merely 36:15.612 --> 36:20.062 breathe that spirit into man, but moulded it in each 36:20.059 --> 36:23.019 individual and infused it throughout." 36:23.019 --> 36:26.409 The divine soul is everywhere in the Miltonic body, 36:26.408 --> 36:29.758 the human body. Of course, that means that all 36:29.762 --> 36:33.802 human acts are sanctioned by God including -- maybe most 36:33.798 --> 36:37.128 importantly, the sexual act is given the 36:37.128 --> 36:40.758 highest form of divine approval imaginable. 36:40.760 --> 36:44.730 Milton wants us to think of the sense of his verse as being 36:44.730 --> 36:48.450 similarly infused; the poem is similarly infused 36:48.450 --> 36:53.230 throughout with some kind of soul or spirit or divine energy 36:53.231 --> 36:57.611 throughout the entirety of a verse paragraph.Milton 36:57.607 --> 37:02.467 refuses in Paradise Lost to constrain a thought, 37:02.469 --> 37:10.149 or to confine it, to a grammatical unit of sense. 37:10.150 --> 37:14.830 A grammatical unit of sense is never identical to a line in 37:14.829 --> 37:18.729 Milton's poem. Sense doesn't simply end at the 37:18.731 --> 37:21.091 end of a ten-syllable line. 37:21.090 --> 37:27.650 Now most rhymed poems in Milton's day were end-stopped 37:27.646 --> 37:31.786 lines of verse. An end-stopped line is one in 37:31.793 --> 37:36.093 which the grammatical unit of sense stops precisely at the end 37:36.092 --> 37:38.862 of the line. The next line of verse picks up 37:38.860 --> 37:41.450 a different thought and the next one after that, 37:41.452 --> 37:43.512 and so on. You can actually see the 37:43.508 --> 37:46.688 mechanics of end-stopped verse quite clearly in the rhymed 37:46.688 --> 37:48.918 version of Paradise Lost that, 37:48.920 --> 37:51.960 admittedly, the great poet John Dryden wrote. 37:51.960 --> 37:54.120 This was supposed to be the libretto for an opera. 37:54.119 --> 37:57.409 Dryden seems to have gotten permission from the old, 37:57.410 --> 38:00.830 blind poet Milton himself because Dryden felt that the 38:00.830 --> 38:04.510 public had an interest in reading Paradise Lost but 38:04.508 --> 38:08.378 they couldn't deal with the fact that it didn't rhyme; 38:08.380 --> 38:12.180 so Dryden set out on this remarkable project of making the 38:12.184 --> 38:14.994 whole thing rhyme, and I invite you to read 38:14.988 --> 38:16.388 Dryden's efforts. 38:16.390 --> 38:17.490 They're really quite remarkable. 38:17.489 --> 38:21.419 It's not unlike what the Turner Broadcasting Network does with 38:21.420 --> 38:24.840 old movies, colorizing them in order to make them more 38:24.836 --> 38:28.186 palatable to a modern audience.You'll notice that 38:28.187 --> 38:31.917 every line of the passage from Dryden here concludes with a 38:31.924 --> 38:35.484 comma or a period, because every line constitutes 38:35.476 --> 38:37.786 its own syntactical unit of meaning. 38:37.789 --> 38:41.339 Milton's poem -- this is a statistical fact, 38:41.340 --> 38:45.960 I don't know who came up with it -- Milton's poem has far 38:45.963 --> 38:51.003 fewer end-stopped lines than the verse of any other poet. 38:51.000 --> 38:53.530 Milton's lines, we say, are enjambed: 38:53.534 --> 38:57.264 they run in to one another, and a syntactical unit for 38:57.264 --> 39:00.014 Milton is continually spilling out. 39:00.010 --> 39:03.720 It's bursting out of the line and infusing itself into the 39:03.720 --> 39:07.300 next line, and then into the next, and into the next. 39:07.300 --> 39:10.880 I don't know who came up with this statistic but I love it: 39:10.884 --> 39:14.284 nearly three out of every five lines in Paradise Lost 39:14.284 --> 39:18.244 are enjambed -- they embrace the practice of enjambment. 39:18.239 --> 39:22.419 The meaning or the sense of a verse paragraph is diffused 39:22.423 --> 39:24.743 throughout a series of lines. 39:24.739 --> 39:28.379 I think that Milton intends for us to think of the verse in 39:28.383 --> 39:31.903 Paradise Lost as he wanted us to think of books in 39:31.900 --> 39:34.920 Areopagitica: the lines of Milton's poetry 39:34.915 --> 39:39.635 are not absolutely dead things, but they do contain within them 39:39.636 --> 39:44.426 a potency of life.So Milton imagined that his own verse was 39:44.429 --> 39:48.449 to be read and experienced something like a body. 39:48.449 --> 39:52.229 Of course, it's a body that enjoys an extraordinary degree 39:52.227 --> 39:55.937 of freedom, and this is a freedom that's infused into the 39:55.937 --> 39:59.977 Creation when the Holy Spirit impregnates the vast abyss. 39:59.980 --> 40:02.550 This is also the freedom enjoyed by surely, 40:02.550 --> 40:06.160 hands down, the most remarkable of all of Milton's corporeal 40:06.161 --> 40:08.611 creatures, and those are the angels. 40:08.610 --> 40:13.340 I imagine it sounds strange to hear that Milton is asking us in 40:13.344 --> 40:17.854 some way to think of the lines of his poetry as if they were 40:17.850 --> 40:21.490 the bodies of angels, but the notion of corporeal 40:21.486 --> 40:25.446 freedom is so central to Milton that it actually makes sense in 40:25.451 --> 40:29.351 some ways that Milton would want to attribute it to all of the 40:29.352 --> 40:33.192 most original and the most daring elements of his poem. 40:33.190 --> 40:36.570 This is an argument that's been developed really quite 40:36.565 --> 40:39.045 brilliantly by a great Milton critic, 40:39.050 --> 40:43.610 William Kerrigan.A lot of Book One is given over, 40:43.614 --> 40:47.214 as you know, to those magnificent catalogs 40:47.213 --> 40:51.783 of the names of the fallen angels as Milton names the 40:51.778 --> 40:54.158 demons, the fallen angels, 40:54.161 --> 40:58.161 and catalogs the names that they assumed when they ascended 40:58.161 --> 41:01.611 to earth and took on the form of pagan deities. 41:01.610 --> 41:05.300 Look at line 423 in Book One. 41:05.300 --> 41:10.750 41:10.750 --> 41:13.010 I'll bet you, even if you're reading this for 41:13.011 --> 41:15.991 the second or the third time, you were surprised again when 41:15.992 --> 41:17.382 you came to this point. 41:17.380 --> 41:21.080 Milton's been noting that some of the pagan deities that the 41:21.077 --> 41:25.147 fallen angels eventually became were male and some were female. 41:25.150 --> 41:27.530 It's here that Milton for no [laughs] 41:27.526 --> 41:31.216 explicit, or no apparent, reason at all -- it's here that 41:31.223 --> 41:35.053 he provides a little theoretical digression on the stunning 41:35.053 --> 41:37.433 flexibility of angelic bodies. 41:37.429 --> 41:40.629 In the context it is a little gratuitous. 41:40.630 --> 41:43.570 Line 423: For Spirits when they 41:43.570 --> 41:46.470 please Can either Sex assume, or both; 41:46.469 --> 41:51.189 so soft And uncompounded is thir Essence pure, Not ti'd 41:51.188 --> 41:55.438 or manacl'd with joint or limb, Nor founded on the brittle 41:55.444 --> 41:57.924 strength of bones, Like cumbrous flesh; 41:57.920 --> 42:01.210 but in what shape they choose, Dilated or 42:01.206 --> 42:04.866 condens't, bright or obscure, Can execute thir 42:04.865 --> 42:08.585 aery purposes, And works of love or 42:08.585 --> 42:11.845 enmity fulfil. Clearly, the angels have bodies 42:11.845 --> 42:14.155 here. They're made of matter just as 42:14.164 --> 42:16.934 human beings are, but their bodies aren't 42:16.930 --> 42:19.420 compounded of separable elements. 42:19.420 --> 42:22.780 They don't have joints and limbs or organs or flesh. 42:22.780 --> 42:27.820 They're nothing but a strangely embodied form of pure spirit, 42:27.821 --> 42:31.601 corporeal spirit: a spirit that's been infused 42:31.603 --> 42:36.563 through a loosely circumscribed shape.Now we learn later 42:36.561 --> 42:41.941 that the fact that these spirits can "either Sex assume" actually 42:41.939 --> 42:46.659 comes in rather handy, as the angels are permitted to 42:46.660 --> 42:50.550 experience a form of sexual union that far exceeds the 42:50.548 --> 42:55.388 miserable coition that creatures like us are forced to perform, 42:55.389 --> 42:58.399 the coition "founded on the brittle strength of bones," 42:58.398 --> 43:02.548 Milton writes. Milton's angels in an act of 43:02.545 --> 43:07.425 sexual union are fully smooshed together. 43:07.429 --> 43:10.769 They are un-individuated, if that makes any sense, 43:10.772 --> 43:12.752 in the act of sexual union. 43:12.750 --> 43:17.990 There is the unutterable sexual rush that can only come about 43:17.986 --> 43:22.606 through total corporeal enjambment.Now this little 43:22.612 --> 43:27.942 discussion that Milton's given us here on the ambisexuality of 43:27.936 --> 43:30.676 his angels, not unlike perhaps the 43:30.682 --> 43:33.902 ambisexuality of his God, seems to have little to do with 43:33.897 --> 43:36.707 the discussion at hand of the heathen deities, 43:36.710 --> 43:39.260 but I think it has everything to do with Milton's 43:39.264 --> 43:42.634 understanding of his own verse, which he has freed from the 43:42.632 --> 43:45.682 bondage of rhyming just as angels are freed from the 43:45.678 --> 43:47.588 manacles of joints and limbs. 43:47.590 --> 43:50.980 Milton's not only writing in a poetic style that he thinks is 43:50.981 --> 43:53.921 politically motivated and ideologically motivated, 43:53.920 --> 43:57.470 and he is doing that, but the style of Paradise 43:57.466 --> 44:01.226 Lost is also powerfully eroticized for Milton. 44:01.230 --> 44:05.780 In its amazing malleability of form, having dismissed the 44:05.776 --> 44:09.426 manacle of rhyme, the poem is teeming with the 44:09.430 --> 44:12.840 same kind of erotic energy -- this is, 44:12.840 --> 44:16.950 I think, Milton's fantasy for the poem -- the same energies 44:16.951 --> 44:21.201 that charge that image of books in Areopagitica.So 44:21.204 --> 44:25.674 let's look at an example of how this might actually happen, 44:25.670 --> 44:28.990 44:28.989 --> 44:31.789 a way in which the verse actually seems to generate this 44:31.791 --> 44:33.321 sensation of bodily freedom. 44:33.320 --> 44:37.450 Just look at the first line of the poem: "Of Man's First 44:37.454 --> 44:39.714 Disobedience and the Fruit." 44:39.710 --> 44:44.240 We think at first, because before we read this 44:44.243 --> 44:50.393 poem we were so used to reading end-stopped lines of verse, 44:50.389 --> 44:55.239 like the lines of verse that all of Milton's contemporaries 44:55.238 --> 44:59.828 were disgorging -- we assume, I think, after the first line 44:59.828 --> 45:02.858 that the line should be pronounced like this: 45:02.860 --> 45:06.240 "Of Man's First Disobedience and the Fruit" -- and 45:06.237 --> 45:09.177 implicitly, "of the fruit of the 45:09.184 --> 45:13.064 Disobedience," as if the line was actually: 45:13.056 --> 45:17.386 "Of Man's First Disobedience and its Fruit," 45:17.389 --> 45:18.549 meaning the fruit of the disobedience. 45:18.550 --> 45:23.630 We read "fruit" naturally, here, as if it meant "result" 45:23.633 --> 45:25.393 or "consequence." 45:25.389 --> 45:27.789 We don't find this out until we get to the next line, 45:27.791 --> 45:30.381 that the "fruit" at the end of the line is only a kind of 45:30.377 --> 45:31.667 temporary resting place. 45:31.670 --> 45:35.470 It's a provisional ending. 45:35.469 --> 45:38.539 It's not a rhyme word, and so it doesn't constitute 45:38.542 --> 45:42.352 the end of a unit of sense as a rhyme word would in most heroic 45:42.353 --> 45:45.863 couplets.The sense of the sentence pushes us on to the 45:45.856 --> 45:48.696 next line, which alters our view of the 45:48.699 --> 45:52.479 meaning of the word "fruit:": "Of Man's First Disobedience 45:52.484 --> 45:55.344 and the Fruit / of that Forbidden Tree." 45:55.340 --> 45:56.610 The word isn't figurative. 45:56.610 --> 46:00.460 It turns out to be literal, real fruit, and we realize now 46:00.459 --> 46:04.309 that we've only partially understood the sense of the word 46:04.309 --> 46:07.249 "fruit." The combination of our readerly 46:07.249 --> 46:11.439 experience of these two lines -- first, the figurative reading 46:11.438 --> 46:15.558 that comes from our habits of reading end-stopped verses, 46:15.559 --> 46:19.599 and now the literal meaning of "fruit" that comes from this 46:19.600 --> 46:23.570 newly acquired habit of reading enjambed lines -- it's the 46:23.571 --> 46:27.191 experience of both of these cognitive sensations that 46:27.193 --> 46:30.823 provides us with a true signifying experience of what 46:30.815 --> 46:34.085 Milton can do with a word like "fruit," 46:34.090 --> 46:37.010 which is obviously going to be a loaded one in the 46:37.008 --> 46:40.278 poem.Look at another instance of the malleability of 46:40.284 --> 46:42.864 this verse a few lines down: … 46:42.856 --> 46:44.936 [the heavenly spirit that] didst inspire That 46:44.936 --> 46:46.926 Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed, 46:46.929 --> 46:49.759 In the Beginning how the Heav'ns and Earth Rose out 46:49.758 --> 46:51.408 of Chaos... Now at first, 46:51.405 --> 46:54.005 I think Milton seems to mean that the shepherd, 46:54.006 --> 46:57.676 Moses, inspired by the muse, first taught the Israelites how 46:57.679 --> 47:01.269 the heavens and earth rose out of chaos in the beginning. 47:01.269 --> 47:04.689 It was Moses who came up with this phrase, Milton thought, 47:04.690 --> 47:05.950 "in the beginning." 47:05.949 --> 47:09.109 Those are the first words of the Book of Genesis; 47:09.110 --> 47:12.260 but Milton has clearly placed this little phrase, 47:12.260 --> 47:16.460 this adverbial phrase "in the Beginning," in an awkward place. 47:16.460 --> 47:20.030 He frees himself -- this is an insight that William Kerrigan 47:20.030 --> 47:23.300 has also had -- he frees himself from the strictures of 47:23.297 --> 47:26.527 conventional syntax, and he places that phrase "in 47:26.528 --> 47:30.328 the Beginning" at the beginning of the line, very strangely and 47:30.331 --> 47:33.831 very awkwardly before the "how": "in the Beginning how the 47:33.827 --> 47:35.297 Heav'ns and Earth." 47:35.300 --> 47:39.890 He's done this because he wants to permit this phrase to do more 47:39.886 --> 47:42.576 than simply modify the verb "rose." 47:42.579 --> 47:46.139 We can also see in this phrase "in the Beginning" -- we can see 47:46.138 --> 47:48.948 it applying to the end of the preceding clause, 47:48.949 --> 47:52.439 "That Shepherd who first taught the chosen Seed / in the 47:52.444 --> 47:55.194 Beginning." "In the Beginning" can modify 47:55.186 --> 47:58.816 the verb "taught" as easily as it can the verb "rose." 47:58.820 --> 48:02.220 It can either verb assume, just as Milton's angels can 48:02.224 --> 48:05.634 "either Sex assume."There's an important point, 48:05.630 --> 48:09.080 I think, that's being made with this second possibility. 48:09.079 --> 48:13.569 Milton needs to imagine the narrative of the Creation as if 48:13.574 --> 48:18.074 the narration itself were taking place in the beginning, 48:18.070 --> 48:22.110 as if poetic creation could be a first in the same radical way 48:22.108 --> 48:26.078 that the creation of entire universe is obviously a first. 48:26.079 --> 48:29.359 This is a strategy called double syntax, 48:29.364 --> 48:33.834 the notion that "in the Beginning" can modify one verb 48:33.828 --> 48:36.568 or the other. It's just this kind of 48:36.568 --> 48:39.778 rhetorical trick that Milton uses -- so many rhetorical 48:39.778 --> 48:43.288 tricks like this that Milton will use throughout the poem -- 48:43.287 --> 48:45.367 that led Dr. Johnson to say in utter 48:45.368 --> 48:47.028 exasperation, but admiration, 48:47.032 --> 48:50.012 that "Milton wrote no language": this isn't English 48:50.005 --> 48:51.785 [laughs] that Milton is writing 48:51.789 --> 48:55.059 here.Milton's language doesn't have the same kind of 48:55.059 --> 48:58.149 headlong rush that most declarative English sentences 48:58.151 --> 49:00.771 have. We're continually being 49:00.765 --> 49:03.655 prevented from reading the text to get to the end. 49:03.659 --> 49:06.599 We're prevented from rushing to the end of the sentence, 49:06.604 --> 49:09.604 or to the end of the poem, because at least as far as the 49:09.602 --> 49:11.532 -- well, you can understand why. 49:11.530 --> 49:14.590 As far as the plot goes, we know how it's going to end. 49:14.590 --> 49:17.390 We know, of course, that Adam and Eve are going to 49:17.387 --> 49:20.067 eat the stupid fruit; but Milton is developing a 49:20.068 --> 49:23.438 style -- and he's working really hard to do this -- that works to 49:23.436 --> 49:26.116 resist our drive to get to the end of the story. 49:26.119 --> 49:30.369 It's through a mechanism of an entirely new kind of verse that 49:30.368 --> 49:34.058 Milton weaves into the metrical fabric of the poem, 49:34.059 --> 49:38.699 a new perspective on that old theological problem of human 49:38.704 --> 49:41.724 free will and divine foreknowledge. 49:41.719 --> 49:45.769 Can it be said that we actually chose to sin or to eat the apple 49:45.766 --> 49:49.166 if God had known all along how the story would end, 49:49.170 --> 49:51.380 or that we would do this thing in the first place? 49:51.380 --> 49:55.880 That's the conundrum that on some level we've all confronted 49:55.880 --> 49:59.160 and has been confronted since time began; 49:59.159 --> 50:03.009 but Milton knows that if this poem is going to be successful, 50:03.014 --> 50:06.554 we cannot as readers be permitted to think the story had 50:06.546 --> 50:07.956 to be what it was. 50:07.960 --> 50:12.560 We can't be permitted to think that the story had to turn out 50:12.557 --> 50:15.387 the way it did. We need to think that the 50:15.392 --> 50:18.892 actions in the story were in some way free and absolutely, 50:18.886 --> 50:20.476 perfectly undetermined. 50:20.480 --> 50:24.300 We need to get at the story of the Fall from the perspective of 50:24.304 --> 50:27.514 its beginning rather than from the perspective of its 50:27.512 --> 50:31.092 ending.And so Milton infuses this angelic freedom, 50:31.090 --> 50:35.350 and he infuses this bodily liberty, into the actual body of 50:35.345 --> 50:39.145 the verse itself, of course, to make a point. 50:39.150 --> 50:44.350 He's incorporating his style, a radical, original style, 50:44.349 --> 50:48.319 into the essential argument of the poem. 50:48.320 --> 50:53.090 He permits his own unconstrained indulgence in 50:53.090 --> 50:55.210 poetic enjambment. 50:55.210 --> 50:58.350 He permits enjambment to become the verbal medium. 50:58.349 --> 51:03.319 This is the pulsating vehicle for his precious theology of 51:03.324 --> 51:07.954 free will and for his politics of liberty.Okay. 51:07.950 --> 51:11.590 That's the end. I want to remind you a final 51:11.591 --> 51:17.271 time to look at your Spenser, the cave of Mammon episode, 51:17.274 --> 51:19.004 as well as Dr.