The Cambridge Companion to Milton ed. by Dennis Danielson (review)

116 LETTERS IN CANADA 1989 /;.. .as been neglected by others, and in all he has ~/('> I I ~ ; c ose, ucid, and perceptive reading of Herbert. .nation of the poetry as an expression of spirituality ylain why there has been so much more striking a . in the appreciation of Herbert than of any other very .:enth-century writers who were his equals in spirituality, .my Taylor or Richard Baxter. The study ofHerbert's language ~ery provides part of the answer, but, though Sherwood is well of the peculiarly close relations between theme and form in _.ert, he has in practice relatively little to say about form and .rsification: he does not analyse in much detail the formal experimentarion , variety, and mastery for which The Temple is so notable. As he has helped move us from an understanding of Herbert's theology to an understanding of his spirituality, perhaps the next stage should be the rediscovery of what those great pioneers in the modern appreciation of Herbert, Joseph Summers, Rosemond Tuve, and Louis Martz, were never in any danger offorgetting, that Herbert is a Renaissance poet, and that Sidney is as important a part of the context as Sibbes. This would not be to turn away from Sherwood's approach but to go even further than he has gone in showing the ways in which Herbert made his art the expression of his spirituality. In Herbert's Prayerful Art, however, Terry Sherwood has certainly given us as much as we should ask from a single book, and from his work one returns to each of Herbert's poems with an increased understanding of its relation to larger patterns and purposes in The Temple. (ALLAN PRITCHARD) Dennis Danielson, editor. The Cambridge Companion to Milton Cambridge University Press. xiv, 297. us $42.50; $12.95 paper This is the second notable collection of essays on Milton in the last two years to have an editor who is involved in the Canadian academic scene. Re-membering Milton (ed Nyquist and Ferguson 1987) was an aggressive challenge to the 'theoretical innocence' of the Milton Academy. It attempted to stimulate a critical discourse on Milton that would be 'more engaged, as well as more theoretically and historically informed.' Now, the Academy can strike back ... but it does not choose to do so. As it makes its Authorised Version of the writer, it averts its gaze from the whole postmodern enterprise, apart from the occasional flicker of a signifier, a whisper from Bakhtin, and a few chaste glances at Freud. Dennis Danielson has assembled the most distinguished luminaries of the Academy to write on topics identified with themselves. So, Barbara Lewalski writes on Paradise Lost and literary genres, Mary Ann Radzinowicz on Miltonic hermeneutics and Paradise Regained, Joan Bennett on HUMANITIES 117 Samson and the Law and so on. Unlike the writers in Re-membering Milton, these are not writing for their peers. It is not quite clear who the intended audience is. If it is 'any student' or 'beginning readers,' the lists of recommended reading are daunting: some 270 books and 160 articles (with some duplication) are recommended by seventeen essayists. The concluding bibliographical survey touches on over 200 works. Lewalski suggests 81 titles for further reading, including Minturno and Scaliger in Latin. Some undergraduate! If the graduate student is targeted, the avoidance of postmodern critical analysis will disappoint, and the patient, explanatory tone of some writers (slightly avuncular in the essay on Comus) will be found tedious. The essays are uniformly lucid, for which the editor deserves credit. This is not a handbook, providing preliminary information about writer, text, or genre, nor are the essays summaries of critical opinion. They are personal responses to Milton's works, with occasional useful reactions to opposed critical positions. This collection is more balanced and coherent than the usual quickly assembled collections of articles and excerpts that the market encourages. It begins with a lightly handled description of Milton's life by Shawcross, who notes recent findings and briskly dismisses doubtful traditions. There is a particularly interesting survey of Milton's influence by Dustin Griffin, who finds little anxiety in writers who read Milton and himself engages Bloom unanxiously...