The Romantic Legacy of Paradise Lost (review)

Jonathan Shears's insightful work seeks to examine the influence of Paradise Lost on the Romantic poets. Shears's central claim is that Milton is the key literary figure for the Romantics, after Shakespeare. He charts the complex responses of the Romantic poets to their poetic father across nine chapters.

The first two chapters consider the influence of Neoclassicism on Romanticism, as well as introducing the reader to the significance of Milton's influence on the development of literature in the eighteenth century. When invoking the precursor poets and theorists of this period, Shears chooses to focus on Edmund Burke's ideas on terror and the sublime. The Satan of Paradise Lost here emerges as a highly ambiguous figure, capable of eliciting respect and awe in his readers as well as fear and terror. Shears argues on the basis of this insight that the Romantic Sublime is haunted by the contested heroism of Milton's Satan. He goes on to examine how individual Romantic poets endeavour to exorcise this spectre. In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, for instance, Blake encourages readers to perceive the 'dualistic bind' involved in supporting the 'either/or' of Miltonian God/Blakean Satan. According to Shears, Blake 'instructs the reader how to read Paradise Lost by avoiding the visionary limitations that attach to authorial intent'. In true Bloomian style, Blake thus endorses a strong misreading of Milton. In his chapter on Wordsworth, Shears chooses to focus on the relations between The Prelude and Paradise Lost, noting a number of key differences between their treatments of epic conventions. For example, where Paradise Lost 'relates' the story of the fall of Adam and Eve, The Prelude focuses on the poet's ascent 'through the Alps, Snowdon and towards epiphany' (which, of course, is the Wordsworthian Sublime). However, Shears concludes that the Prelude poet could not have had his epiphany without the fall from grace of Milton's Adam and Eve.

Coleridge, according to Shears, sees Milton as 'a Virgil to his Dante'. The early Coleridge wants to be like Wordsworth in focusing on the mind and its role in determining the nature of the individual. Where Coleridge distinguishes himself from Wordsworth it is in his role as a kind of 'philosopher-poet'. Shears sees the connection between Milton and Coleridge as the latter's opportunity to 'break free' from the shackles of his former friend and poetic ally. Thus, Coleridge reads Milton 'protectively' in order to assert his difference from Wordsworth.

For Byron and Shelley, the common thread in their poetic triangle with Milton is the role of Satan, or the Satan-like character. While Byron's interpretation of the Miltonian Satan was regarded by his contemporaries as pragmatic and somewhat superficial, Shears, by contrast, argues that Byron maintains a strong ethical engagement with Milton's anti-hero throughout his career. In Manfred, for example, the battle between good and evil in Paradise Lost becomes a psychodrama in which the central character strives for confirmation of his authenticity. According to Shears, 'each of Byron's tragic heroes finds fault in his own circumstances but can never wholly believe, or is too proud to relinquish, the fact that he was not the architect of his own downfall. As distinct from Milton's Satan, the Byronic hero both confirms and desires responsibility for his actions.' In addition to a fine reading of Cain, which draws out Byron's intense engagement with moral questions, Shears goes on to consider the overlooked influence of Milton on a number of other Byron poems. Lara, one of Byron's most Satan-like characters, has fallen before the narrative begins. In Marino Faliero, the Doge of Venice, the earthly monarch who unveils a tragic consequence of his being, is portrayed as the 'architect of his own destruction'.

In his reading of Shelley, Shears concentrates on the connections between Satan and Prometheus. Unlike Satan who, in Milton's poem, realises that his powers bind him in a relationship with God...