David Matthews, in his contribution to this volume, identifies a tension between veneration of significant figures from the past and scepticism surrounding their authorship, their arguments, and in some cases their existence. Elsewhere, Paul Stevens has shown the extent to which Milton was in a similar predicament, wanting to find in England's history a subject worthy of epic, but torn between the rigorous revisionism of the likes of Camden and Selden and 'the patriotic [tradition] mediated through Spenser, Shakespeare, and Drayton' (Stevens 2012: 157). Between Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur, completed by 1470, and published by Caxton-with carefully qualified scepticism about Arthur's existence-in 1485, and Milton's History of Britain (1670), we can follow the fortunes of Arthur as a figure contested and celebrated in equal measure. Malory depicted the French wars under the guise of Arthur's sixth-century campaign against Rome, and Book III of Milton's History uses the same interval between Roman departure and Saxon arrival to warn contemporaries of the dangers of backsliding. One approach to early modern Arthurianism suggests that somewhere between Malory and Milton, Arthur became an inconvenient myth, retaining poetic and propagandistic potential but scoffed at by serious scholars. The Reformation and the rise of antiquarianism engendered suspicion of medieval sources, and Arthur and Brutus were undone by the rise of Anglo-Saxon studies (Brinkley 1932). Yet Arthur, like Brutus, maintained momentum even as myth morphed from history to poetry. But before delving into the variegated history of later 2 representations of Arthur, we must first consider how the legendary king was used in Malory's time. Why the Matter of Britain mattered It's been argued that Malory's Morte Darthur was, like Spenser's Faerie Queene, an historical allegory, addressing the reigns of Henry IV and Henry V. Inconsistencies in Malory's Arthur have been attributed to his allegorical depiction of successive English monarchs: "interpreting it in terms of the Lancastrian dynasty, the three rulers dominating the life of Malory, it is a strikingly accurate picture. In general features the personality and career of Henry IV, Henry V, and Henry VI correspond respectively to (1) the Arthur of the first three books, (2) the Arthur of book four extending through to the Grail section, and (3) the Arthur of the post-Grail period"
Noam Reisner recognizes that 'the claim to novelty in Milton studies is a notoriously difficult one' (10), and so it now seems natural for Miltonists to follow Pierre Macherey's suggestion that 'what is most important in the work is what it does not say'. 1 Scholars in the field are shifting their focus from what Milton did say, to what he did not say, and how he did not say it. While this may appear to be an unnecessarily dense or even absurd line of inquiry, it nevertheless proves remarkably rewarding. Of the three works discussed in this review, only one, Noam Reisner's Milton and the Ineffable, is explicitly concerned with the question of silence. However, Milton and Monotheism by Abraham Stoll also reveals a surprising engagement with silence through its exploration of the paradox of deistic revelation. In the Oxford Handbook of Milton, a number of essays in the collection explore both Milton's use of voices and the gaps and silences in his corpus, to great effect.Reisner's thesis is that Milton 'only ever wants to be seen to say the unsayable without actually saying it' (7), and this rather opaque statement initially leaves the reader a little uncertain of the accessibility of the rest of the book. Such fears are soon allayed, however, by an illuminating discussion of the evolution of the concept of ineffability in western thought. While such overviews often divide intellectual history into neat epochs, Reisner is careful to emphasize the fundamental sense of continuity. One notable exception is the treatment of the Reformation as a watershed moment in the history of ineffability. The resurgence of biblical translation and exegesis in this period transformed the ineffable from its original ontological status into a semantic phenomenon, as the impossibility of translational parity highlighted the inherent insufficiency of language.With the theoretical framework of his thesis firmly established, Reisner then delves into Milton's works. While his investigation of the earlier poems is largely conventional, he strikingly suggests that Comus is not merely afraid of the Lady's unassailable virtue. Comus is actually anxious regarding the presence of the ineffable within the Lady, as her virtue is irreducible to words and impervious to verbal seduction.Strangely, Reisner passes over the prose tracts of the 1650s without comment. The Defences were written to disabuse Europe of Salmasius' misrepresentation of the English, and so the tracts are fundamentally concerned with what had not been said.
This book follows the recent critical trend of exploring the silences in Milton's work, considered most eloquently in Noam Reisner's Milton and the Ineffable (2009). Erin Henriksen reassesses the common perception that Milton was silent about the Passion, by demonstrating that the Passion is in fact present throughout his canon, albeit in a reconfigured form. The author establishes the critical context of the book by observing that ''a thorough study of Milton's writing on the crucifixion has yet to be undertaken'' (9). While there have been sporadic considerations of Milton's representation of the sufferings of Christ-most commonly focused on his fragmentary early poem ''The Passion''-Henriksen argues that the Passion was far from ignored by the mature Milton. RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY
w w w .a s h g a te .c o m w w w .a s h g a te .c o m w w w .a s h g a te .c o m w w w .a s h g a te .c o m w w w .a s h g a te .c o m w w w .a s h g a te .c o m w w w .a s h g a te .c o m w w w .a s h g a te .c o m w w w .a s h g a te .c o m w w w .a s h g a te .c o m w w w .a s h g a te .c o m w w w .a s h g a te .c o m chapter 9'is this the Region … that we must change for heav'n?': milton on the margins Willy maley and adam swann all the Regions do smilingly revolt, and who resist Are mocked for valiant ignorance.-Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 4.6.124-61For an inventory of Milton's uses of the word 'region', see Lockwood, 404-5.
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