Milton and Poetic Form

Review Articles Milton and Poetic Form HUGH MAC CALLUM Louis L. Martz. Poet of Exile: A Study ofMilton's Poetry New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press '980. x, 356. $22.50 Joseph Anthony Wittreich, Jr. Visionary Poetics: Milton's Tradition and His Legacy San Marino, Calif: Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery '979. xxxiv, 324. $18.50 Edward W. Tayler. Milton's Poetry: Its Development in Time Pittsburgh, Pa: Duquesne University Press '979. x, 273. $18.00 Stella Price Revard. The War in Heaven: Paradise Lost and the Tradition of Satan's Rebellion Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 1980. 3'5 John G. Demaray. Milton's Theatrical Epic: The Invention and Design of Paradise Lost Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press 1980. xviii, 161 Laying his plans to write poetry which aftertimes would not willingly let die, Milton in his mid-thirties was much preoccupied with questions of genre: 'what the laws are of a true epic poem, whatof a dramatic, what of a lyric, what decorum is, which is the grand masterpiece to observe.' He had already shown in his early poetry an unusual mastery of such lesser forms as pastoral monody, masque, and sonnet, and he was to go on to use the genres of epic and tragic drama with astonishing originality and authority. Modem criticism, paying close attention to Milton's use of genres, finds an inexhaustible richness of aesthetic and moral significance in his ordering and renewing of convention. Recent studies have explored his debt to the masque tradition, to Christian epic of the Renaissance, to prophecy, and to the shaping force of ideas about time. Even Milton's relation to the ancients has been re-evaluated, as in Louis L. Martz's argument that Ovid, especially the Ovid of the Metamorphoses, should be UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLUME 50, NUMBER 3, SPRrNG 1981 0042-o247/81/0500-0314S00,00/0 Cl UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS MILTON CRITICISM 315 added to the list of important predecessors. Poet of Exile is much more than an examination of Milton's debt to a somewhat neglected source, however, for Martz's discussion of the poetry is the comprehensive result of many years of lecturing and writing. It contains nine essays previously published, but these have been revised, sometimes extensively, and to them has been added a substan· Hal body of new material, including three essays on Paradise Lost and Ovid, These additions and alterations have produced a fine study that takes into account the minor poems as well as Samson Agonistes and Paradise Regained, but which devotes )ver half its length to Paradise Lost. The strength ofMartz's criticism arises from his style as well as his learning and socd sense. Observations are made in a manner which both clears the mind and uouses the imagination. Commonplace facts, acknowledged but ignored, sud- :tenly take on fresh significance, while the results of scholarly research are ntroduced with easy grace and relevance. No one writing of Milton today has a ;harper eye for the illuminating detail - the biblical allusion, the deliberate choice )farchaic or latinate diction - or for the importance ofverse form in conveying the itructure of feeling. With provocative economy Martz exposes the patterns and ensions within the poetry, illuminates our experience as readers, and directs us owards a balanced judgment. What picture of Milton emerges from Poet of Exile? This is, as the title implies, a ~ok about the poet, not the scholar, the humanist, the political activist, or the heologian. Form is a pervasive concern, and among forms one that receives much ttention is pastoralism - both the joyful pastoralism of the early poems, which temonstrates Milton's vital belief in the civilizing and harmonizing power of loetry and music, and the beleaguered pastoralism of the late poetry, in which he harmony of God's creation is celebrated against the backdrop of the sombre ision of evil and struggle for redemption. What particularly interests Martz is the lay pastoral and epic interact and merge, and by observing the pervasive presnce of Ovid in Paradise Lost he achieves a new perspective on its heroic and on-heroic elements. This Milton, however, is a Christian and scriptural poet as fell as...